


when I watch the world burn (all I think about is you)

by Flowerparrish



Series: (cruising through the) doom days [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Clint Barton Has PTSD, Clint Barton POV, Deaf Clint Barton, Falling In Love, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Only One Bed, Panic Attacks, Polyamorous Soulmates, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Road Trip, Soulmates, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, soulmate identifying dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-11-23 13:35:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20892956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish
Summary: Clint gets his first dream when he’s four years old.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreyishBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyishBlue/gifts).

> For Bobbi, who asked for ameriwinterhawk soulmates and minimal angst. I got the first two parts of that right, but... well, I hope I don't make you cry TOO much, and I hope you like it anyway. Thank you for such an awesome prompt, and for your endless patience with the time it took me to write it.
> 
> Thank you to Clara for cheering and Arson for beta reading. 
> 
> Thanks to the mods of the Charity Hawktion for running such a great event and making this fic possible!
> 
> The whole fic is complete, to be updated every day. The epilogue will bump the rating up to Explicit, but you can read the story as complete without it if you'd like to avoid the nsfw content.

Clint gets his first dream when he’s four years old.

It’s dark. It’s dark and he can’t feel anything—everything is muffled and cold. He’s looking through something, something that looks like the binoculars Clint’s mom let him use at a baseball game once before Barney claimed them, and then  _ Dad  _ took them, and Clint wasn’t allowed another look. But it looks like that, and then Clint registers that there’s something in his hands, and he’s squeezing and—

The person he’s looking at? Their head  _ explodes  _ in a shower of blood. Clint wants to cry out;  _ Clint  _ wants to cry out, but the person he is in his dream? That person doesn’t flinch, doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t feel  _ anything. _

_ _

Clint wakes up and he’s crying. He’s wet the bed, and Dad’s going to be so mad if he finds out.

Mom bursts into the room and shushes him, eyes frantic, and Clint knows he needs to be quiet before Dad hears him, but he  _ can’t. _

The next day he has a black eye and a swollen jaw and he knows, he knows, that this  _ wasn’t  _ what people talk about.

No one could ever have a soulmate that bad, that empty.

Right?

\--

He never tells anyone.

\--

The dreams don’t stop, but they are much rarer than the dreams you get before you meet your soulmate. Clint gets them sporadically, a couple days out of a couple weeks every few years, and he thinks,  _ they’re just nightmares. _

It’s fine.

He doesn’t have a soulmate, just like the majority of the population, and he’s  _ fine. _

\--

When Clint gets the real soulmate dreams, he doesn’t know what to do with them.

Because… it’s not possible.

So, he does nothing at all.

Before long, everything is overtaken by icy blue tendrils and  _ compliance.  _ Then he doesn’t need to sleep, doesn’t need to dream, doesn’t need to feel anything at all.

And if it reminds him of how the man from his earliest dreams always feels, well.

That doesn’t worry him when he’s like this, because it feels so right, so  _ good. _

\--

Sharp pain wakes Clint, makes him feel like he’s surfacing from deep in the ocean and gasping in his first deep breaths of air in hours. He sees the face of his partner, the person he  _ would  _ have chosen as his soulmate, if he’d been given a choice—and then everything goes black.

\--

When Clint wakes, Natasha is there, but so is  _ he. _

She tells Clint that Loki used him to kill his friends, to kill people who were more his family than his family ever was _ ,  _ and Clint—

Clint doesn’t know what to do. There’s only one thing he can do.

(He thinks he might understand the emotionless man in his dreams a little better. He’s never wanted to—in fact, that was his worst nightmare, worse than the dreams of the atrocities the man commits—but here he is.)

Captain America—Clint’s  _ soulmate,  _ in a big karmic joke—tells Clint he’s welcome to fight with them. More than welcome—that they’d  _ value  _ his support.

Clint can’t stomach the thought of killing, not now, not after everything.

But Clint can’t do anything else, either, to make this right. To distance himself from being the man in his dreams, from being so far from anything someone like Steve Rogers deserves.

\--

When the battle is over, they go for shawarma. It’s the first real meal Clint has had in days; as such, he demolishes everything that Natasha puts in front of him with gusto.

At some point, he glances around the table and catches Steve’s eyes on him. Clint meets them for a moment before he looks back down at his food, no longer hungry.

\--

Clint doesn’t want to go back to SHIELD. Stark offers to put them up in the parts of the Tower that haven’t been destroyed, and Clint would rather be in a building with a giant hole in the side than be at SHIELD right now.

“We’ll take you up on that, thank you, Tony,” Natasha tells him. “One room is fine.”

“It’s a suite, you each get your own rooms. Hell, if this is gonna be long term, I’ll build you your own floors.” Tony keeps talking, but Clint lets the words wash over him without attempting to process them.

That he has a place to stay is enough. That Nat will be there is good. That someone other than Nat or—well, other than Nat, might want to keep him around? Not something he can think about right now.

Steve goes back to his SHIELD place, but before he leaves, he pulls Clint aside. “Thank you for your help,” he tells him. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Clint wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He’s too empty to do either. He just nods, says, “Thanks, Cap,” and turns to go.

Steve’s hand doesn’t drop away from Clint’s arm, though. “Call me Steve.” It’s undeniably a request—but it’s more than that. It’s Clint’s soulmate reaching out.

Clint finds himself helpless in the face of it. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees. “Call me Clint, then.”

They part ways, and Clint tells himself it means nothing.

But when he falls asleep that night, there’s a tiny kernel of warmth buried deep in his chest, the feeling that  _ maybe  _ he’s going to be okay.

\--

Tony gets the tower fixed in no time; to Clint, it feels like he blinks, and the holes and broken windows are repaired. He’d almost wonder if they were ever there at all, but he’s heard stories from Natasha’s time at Stark Industries and he knows secondhand—first, now—the kind of magic Tony’s money can work.

What he doesn’t expect is to turn up in the communal kitchen—his and Nat’s is currently unfurnished, although Stark has promised to fix that sooner rather than later—at 3 am after nightmares about cold and blue and empty, and run into Steve Rogers sitting at the counter with a hot steaming mug between his hands.

Clint had been walking as silently as possible, but he trips over his feet at the sight of Steve, making a quiet thud as his shoulder bumps into the doorway. Steve turns and sees Clint before Clint can retreat.

“Uh, hi,” Clint says awkwardly.

“Hi.”

They watch each other for a moment, and Steve’s eyes are the kind of blue that doesn’t trigger Clint into thoughts he doesn’t want, and Clint kind of wants to keep looking at them until the thought of the color blue becomes associated with Steve’s eyes rather than Asgardian mindfuckery.

That’s a dangerous impulse, though, so Clint breaks their locked gaze and moves over to the coffee machine.

He doesn’t know where to look while the coffee brews—even fancy Stark Tech can only go so fast—so he caves enough to lean against the counter and face Steve. “Did you move in?” Clint can’t think of any other reason as to why Steve would be in the kitchen at 3 am.

“Yeah.” Steve shrugs. “Seemed nicer than SHIELD, and I thought…” he trails off. Shrugs. “Well, it’s easier to have the team together in case something happens.”

Clint snorts, a bitter noise. He knows Banner is somewhere in the tower, but Clint hasn’t seen him since moving in. He can admit that’s partly because he barely leaves his suite, but he’s also pretty sure Banner lives in the lab Stark gave him.

What Clint doesn’t feel comfortable with is the implied assumption that he’s part of this  _ team. _

All he says, though, is, “I sure hope aliens don’t attack again.”

Steve raises his mug and toasts Clint with it. “Amen to that.”

Clint feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin. He’s all anxiety and restless energy—he can barely be around Nat nowadays, much less Stark, much less  _ Steve— _ so he pours as much coffee as has brewed and leaves the rest as a gift for someone else.

“Bye,” he remembers to call over his shoulder as he goes.

“Bye, Clint,” Steve calls back.

\--

The dreams don’t stop. They don’t happen every night—maybe one soulmate dream for every four or five nights of nightmares—but they  _ keep happening. _

It would be okay, Clint thinks, if he didn’t know how  _ lost  _ Steve feels. He’s all heartbreak and quiet confusion, numb to any other feelings, and Clint wants to help but he doesn’t know how.

He also  _ knows,  _ soulmate dreams be damned, that it’s not his place to try.

That’s difficult to keep in mind, though, when Steve seems to be  _ everywhere.  _ The more Clint ventures away from his and Nat’s suite (entirely to keep her from getting fed up with his misery and taking matters into her own, unsympathetic, hands), the more he runs into Steve. In the gym. In the entertainment room. In the kitchen. On the  _ roof _ —and oh, boy, the first day he walks out to see Steve standing near the edge of the roof? His heart skips a beat in his chest in fear, before Steve turns and gives him a soft smile and Clint convinces himself it’s okay.

One day, Clint’s running on the treadmill—he’s only on his fifth mile, so he’s a little sweaty but not anywhere near worn out beyond the way he’s constantly worn out these days—when Steve appears next to him.

Clint turns off his music and says, “What’s up?”

“Want to spar?”

Clint eyes him for a moment. Steve’s all coiled tension, and Clint’s watched Steve destroy reinforced punching bags—he should absolutely say no.

But he has no sense of self-preservation on the best of days, and Steve looks hopeful in a way that tugs at Clint’s heart, unbidden and unwelcome feelings clawing their way free.

“Yeah, okay,” Clint agrees, and he hits the cool down button on the machine.

He stretches first, because he’s not about to cramp up in a fight—even a friendly display of skills—against Steve. Clint knows he probably can’t win, but he’s gonna do his best to prove himself.

His career is, after all, the one thing he’s good for. Well, that he was good for,  _ before.  _ Now it’s just one more thing that’s been taken from him, that he doesn’t deserve to have… but he still has his skills. Those are  _ his,  _ and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let them go just because he’s a husk of a human right now.

Steve tries to go easy on him; it’s a weird combination of moves that are too telegraphed and occasional slips of excessive force.

“Stop going easy,” Clint snaps at him after a few minutes of getting nowhere. “Pull your punches, sure, but I’m not  _ fragile.” _

Steve blinks, but then he grins, bright and almost feral, and Clint’s breath catches in his throat. He has a moment to think,  _ oh,  _ before Steve swings out his arm, and Clint’s got to bring his own up to block it.

He’s  _ fast.  _ Luckily, Clint is also fast; he’s learned from Natasha to be fast and agile and he holds his own. They spar for an hour, and Steve takes most of the matches with a quick strategic mind and sheer force; he learns Clint’s moves and uses them against him, winning more and more as they keep going. But Clint takes a few, and even better than that, Steve keeps him on his toes, keeps him inspired to change things up and not settle into an easy rhythm.

It’s the most alive Clint’s felt in weeks, months—fuck, years?—and when he finally collapses back against the mat and says, “Okay, I’m out,” he can feel his heart pounding in his chest in a way that burns but doesn’t  _ hurt,  _ doesn’t feel like it’s pumping poison through his veins instead of blood.

Steve, crouched over him, looks the same as Clint feels: skin flushed, eyes sharp and clear, panting slightly. He collapses down next to Clint, their shoulders brushing, and Clint keeps his gaze fixed on the ceiling, thinking about how he can make a nest in the rafters and  _ not  _ about the warmth of Steve’s shoulder against his.

“Thanks,” Steve says after a few minutes of silence pass. Clint’s breathing is back to normal now, but he’s content and grounded in his body; he doesn’t want to move and go back to being a ghost haunting the living spaces of the tower right now.

“Any time,” Clint replies, and he finds that he means it. “That was great,” he admits after a moment. “Thank you for asking.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, but Clint looks over at him and sees Steve smiling faintly.

They lay there together in comfortable silence until it’s time for lunch.

\--

That night, Clint dreams of Steve:  _ as  _ Steve. He sees himself through Steve’s eyes—haunted, washed-out, a little gaunt, undeniably tragic. But worse than that, Clint can feel the things that Steve feels when he looks at Clint: confusion, reluctance, and an overwhelming curiosity.

There’s a seed of a feeling, underneath all of the rest, that Clint thinks might be  _ hope. _

_ _

Clint wakes up, and his heart is pounding in his chest, fast and panicky. He can’t be the source of someone else’s hope; he’s not enough; he’ll  _ never  _ be enough.

He hides out in his rooms for the rest of the day, ignoring Nat’s side-eye of concern and frustration, because he can’t face Steve after that.

It doesn’t occur to him, until he’s trying to sleep later that night, to realize that if he dreamed of Steve… did Steve dream of him?

\--

He doesn’t get any sleep that night.

\--

He stumbles into the kitchen the next morning, head pounding from lack of sleep and caffeine withdrawal from going over a day without coffee, and almost brains himself on the door jamb when he sees that Steve is already there.

He’s at the counter making scrambled eggs. “Morning,” he greets, as if nothing is wrong.

As if he hasn’t been subjected to Clint’s psyche.

Clint’s too exhausted to hope for that. He just pulls up a seat at the island and says, “Coffee, please, I’m dying.”

Steve pulls his eggs off the heat and plates them neatly, but then he moves to the cupboard and pulls down a large mug. When he sets it in front of Clint a few moments later, it’s steaming and full of life-giving liquid. Clint wraps his hands around the mug, winces from the heat, and says, “Thanks.”

“Want some eggs?”

Clint shakes his head at the same time as his stomach growls—but, well, he’d mostly lived on poptarts yesterday, and they smell really good. Steve raises an eyebrow at him, repeating the question with the gesture.

“Yeah, okay,” Clint agrees. “Thanks.”

“Toast?” Steve asks, as he moves some of the eggs over to a new plate.

“Yeah, sure.”

Steve pops some bread into the toaster and then moves to sit next to Clint.

They shovel eggs into their mouths in companionable silence. The toast pops up, and Clint’s downed enough coffee to feel almost alive again, so he gets up to grab it for them.

They finish eating, and Steve puts the plates in the dishwasher and gets a fresh mug of coffee for Clint.

It occurs to Clint, all at once, that this is very  _ domestic. _

It feels—or felt, until this moment, this realization— _ nice.  _ That terrifies him.

Steve, as if he’s read Clint’s mind, says, “Are we ever going to talk about it?”

Clint tenses. He stares into his coffee like it holds the secrets of the universe, but if it does, it’s not sharing.

Steve sighs. “We don’t have to. But… we could.”

“I don’t know what to do with a soulmate,” Clint blurts out, and then winces. “I mean—”

“I didn’t think I’d ever have that again,” Steve says, cutting through Clint’s frantic backpedaling. “I didn’t think I’d ever want that, with someone else.”

Clint winces again. “I thought I didn’t have a soulmate,” he says. He doesn’t mention the years when he was afraid that he  _ did  _ have a soulmate—any icy killer, one he’s long since accepted is a figment of his imagination, demons and worst fears come to life. Steve may be his soulmate, but that doesn’t mean Clint trusts him—or anyone—with that part of him.

Steve nods. “It doesn’t…” He trails off.

“It doesn’t what?” Clint prompts after a moment.

“We could be friends,” Steve suggests, not an answer to the question Clint asked but an answer all the same.

“I don’t know what to do with friends either,” Clint admits.

Steve shrugs. “I’ve never been great at friendships,” he admits. “We could be bad at it together.”

Clint contemplates that—the lack of expectation. He doesn’t have to be Steve’s boyfriend, doesn’t even have to be a good friend; he can just be a person with flaws.

That seems easy enough, these days, when he feels more made of up flaws than anything else. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees. He feels somewhat lighter for it.

\--

Being friends isn’t effortless. When you take Clint’s jagged edges and add them to Steve’s awkward silences, easy interactions isn’t anywhere near the result.

It’s marginally better than being alone, though—for both of them. They start spending hours in the same room, sometimes talking, mostly not, and the silence and weight of memories is less heavy when there’s someone else there.

And then, one day, they talk themselves into something that’s either stupid or brilliant—only time will tell.

The decision is made the same way most decisions are made in Clint’s life: via a sudden impulse driven by an attitude somewhere between  _ fuck it  _ and  _ what’s the worst that can happen? _

For a moment, Clint actually feels like himself again—he thinks maybe he  _ looks  _ like himself again, because Nat lets him go with minimal protest.

The decision is this: Steve and Clint are going on a road trip. They don’t know where they’re going. They don’t know for how long.

The lead-up to the decision is that Clint hasn’t slept in three days—but he did sleep through the night three days ago, which is better,  _ really— _ and Steve looks like he hasn’t either. They’re both up in the middle of the night slumped on opposite ends of a ridiculously long couch in the communal living room. (And no, Clint will not refer to it as the “team” living room, because he’s not on the team, simple as that.) They’re talking, the way you do when it’s 2 in the morning and you’re so tired you aren’t tired at all, just somewhere between exhausted and wired, and your filter is shot and your mind is hazy and loose, a little like being tipsy, and all your thoughts and words run together like water colors…

They’re talking, and Steve says, “I haven’t seen much of the world. Hell, I haven’t even seen much of the United States.”

Clint asks, “Didn’t you tour in your USO days?”

Steve pulls a face. “I toured, but we didn’t stay any place too long.”

Clint nods. “The circus was kinda like that sometimes.” There’s a few moments of silence, and then Clint has a thought. He doesn’t even plan to say it; the words are in his brain, and then they’re in the air between them: “Why don’t you go now, then?”

_ So much for not being invested,  _ Clint thinks, because that’s almost like giving advice, and advice means you’re invested in an outcome.

Steve raises his eyebrows. “And leave the world vulnerable if an attack happens?”

Clint shrugs. “SHIELD can pick you up just as easily from Bumblefuck Nowhere, USA as they can from New York.” He contemplates holding on to his next piece of advice—because,  _ invested,  _ and also,  _ hah,  _ who the fuck is  _ Clint  _ to be giving advice?—but, as his ma used to say, in for a penny and all that. “You shouldn’t spend your life always waiting for the next fight. You deserve a chance to live, too.”

Steve frowns, but he doesn’t look angry—more thoughtful than anything. His head’s tilted a little and his eyes catch in the dim light from the TV in front and the kitchen behind them, and Clint’s heart lurches in a way that’s pure  _ want.  _ Not lust, not love, but a desire for the  _ potential  _ that Steve represents—and, fuck,  _ this  _ is exactly why Clint needs to keep his distance.

“Would you go with me?” Steve asks.

Clint blinks. “What?”

Steve shrugs. “Seems to me you’re not doing much living right now either, is all.”

He’s right.

Clint shouldn’t, but…

He kind of wants to. And he hasn’t  _ wanted  _ much in a while; not things he could  _ have _ , at least. It’s a nice change of pace.

“Fuck it,” he says aloud, mouth curling into the tiniest of grins. “Sure, let’s do it.”

SHIELD is not enthused with the idea. Natasha and—unexpectedly—Tony come through on that front, telling SHIELD where they can shove it but burying the sentiment under bylaws and legalese and a few outright threats.

(“I would have just told them to fuck off,” Steve admits.

Clint nods. “I’ve been there. Fury’s eye-twitch is a sight to behold.”)

In the end, Steve is persuaded by Tony to borrow one of his cars—apparently so long as he can keep track of them, SHIELD won’t push too hard about sending agents out to keep an eye on their precious asset(s). Clint privately thinks that Tony just wants to keep tabs on them for his own reasons, whatever they may be. Steve seems to agree, but it’s a moot point—they don’t have another car to take anyway, and why rent one or buy one when Tony’s offering them a luxury vehicle to use for free?

They take the car. Steve takes the least flashy car, some Stark clean energy car, one of the many models on the market (although this one, Clint suspects, is a few years from production for sure)—neither of them can be too bothered to care much about the specifics.

Steve drives by unspoken agreement, and Clint hunches over in the passenger seat, silent, strangely sullen.

After about ten minutes of thick silence, Steve reaches out and turns on the radio.

The radio is, of course, playing a Taylor Swift song. That’s understandable—she’s relatively new to popularity and catchy as hell, exactly what pop stations want to play.

What Clint doesn’t expect is for Steve to start  _ singing along. _

_ _

He’s abruptly shocked out of his sullenness. He turns to stare at Steve, who is singing along off-key and tapping against the steering wheel to the beat.

It takes a moment, but he notices Clint staring and cuts off. “What?” he asks. He doesn’t sound self-conscious or defensive, just genuinely confused.

“You… like Taylor Swift?”

“I mean, her music’s good,” Steve says, fingers still tapping to the beat. “Don’t know her as a person, so I can’t really say much more than that.” He grins a little, like he knows what a little shit he’s being, and Clint doesn’t have time to stop his lips from curling up a little in response.

“Okay,” he says, because surely Steve liking Taylor Swift isn’t the weirdest thing to come out of the last year, even if it might feel like it in this moment. “What other music do you like?”

It turns out that Steve likes just about  _ everything.  _ “I always liked music,” he tells Clint, “even when I was deaf in one ear and couldn’t always hear properly. My ma used to have the radio on all the time at home when I was a kid, classical music mostly, but sometimes she would play whatever was popular at the time, too.”

He has, apparently, been catching up in his spare time, avidly scouring Best Of lists, YouTube recommendations—he even discovered Pandora.

Clint digs through the center console and, sure enough, finds an aux cord. He doesn’t know what his data plan looks like, but he’s using a top of the line StarkPhone, so he figures it’s good enough to stream Pandora on mobile.

Clint bypasses his own Pandora, only sporadically used, and makes a new one. He adds channels for his favorite artists, and channels for Steve’s, and has Steve pick a number at random and that’s what they start with.

It’s the most fun he’s had in a long time. For a few hundred miles, he forgets to be sad, just falls into the easy camaraderie of arguing about songs and singing obnoxiously along to pop and eighties rock ballads and seventies bops.

By the time they stop for dinner, it’s late, and they’re deep in Pennsylvania. They find a small-town diner and Clint, who  _ for once  _ has an appetite, eats a burger almost the size of his head and a small basket of fries. It’s like he’s trying to make up for months of barely eating all in one go—his stomach’s mad at him, sure, but it feels  _ good. _

Steve eats a grilled cheese, a burger, a salad, a basket of fries, and tops it all off with a milkshake. So, you know, Clint looks like a light eater in comparison.

“We need road trip snacks,” Clint decides. “Also, maybe to figure out where we’re going?”

Steve shrugs. Then he orders a cup of coffee and a slice of pie.

“What?” he asks, a little defensive in the face of Clint’s raised eyebrow. “Caffeine doesn’t affect me.”

“I’m more impressed you’ve still got room in your stomach,” Clint admits. “Okay, any places you’ve always wanted to go?”

“I want to see the Pacific Ocean,” Steve says. “The beaches in California. And I want to see the Grand Canyon. Yellowstone. Yosemite. The Rocky Mountains. Blue Ridge Parkway. All the monuments in DC.” He shrugs again. “Everything. I want to see it all.”

Clint nods. “Cool. We can hit the Midwest first, see endless fields of corn and wheat, and then do the West before swinging down South and back up on the East. We might not hit everything, but we can try.”

“Just like that?” Steve asks.

“Just like that,” Clint agrees.

“What do you want to see?” Steve asks, curious.

The thought, unbidden, rises in Clint’s mind:  _ your face when  _ you  _ see all of these places. _

_ _

Instead of saying that, he shrugs and says, “Any of it. All of it.”

Steve smiles softly. “Okay.”

***

Sleeping in a hotel feels oddly better than sleeping in his comfortable bed back in Avengers Tower. That bed is too luxurious; a lumpy mattress in a two-star motel a few feet away from Steve’s softly snoring form is much more Clint’s speed.

He wakes up the next morning feeling maybe not  _ good,  _ but human.

They find a small café for breakfast, where Clint drinks his coffee black and Steve orders a milk and sugar monstrosity. They eat croissants with butter and jam and Steve doesn’t try to talk to Clint before he has his first cup of coffee.

It’s nice.

The day is somewhat dismal, overcast with clouds on the horizon that look like they might bring a storm. “Should we keep going?” Clint asks.

Steve shrugs. “We can always stop if it gets bad.”

They get back on the road, not talking much beyond curating their music stations together, but it’s a restful silence rather than an awkward one.

Clint marvels at how quickly he’s found himself comfortable in Steve’s company—but then, he thinks, with only a little bit of bitterness, they  _ are  _ soulmates. Whatever that means.

The rain breaks sometime around midday, catching up with them all at once, the kind of sudden torrential downpour that blurs out the rest of the world in a cacophony of rhythmic noise. They don’t even have time to find a town; luckily, they’re on a back road, so Steve just pulls off to the side and lets the car idle. “We can wait it out,” he says, but he sounds uncertain.

Clint shrugs. “Might as well,” he agrees. He tilts his chair back and wiggles a bit to get comfortable. He turns his head to look at Steve, all anxious posture and hands still on the wheel. “You can turn off the car,” Clint suggests.

For a moment, Steve doesn’t respond, but then he does. The car goes quiet around them, and it’s like the noise of the rain kicks up a notch.

Clint’s always liked storms. The sound, the smell, the chill… it reminds him of the better parts of childhood, of finding small, attainable joys in the world. He’s always liked the surety of lightning, but the chance of it, too—that you never know where, or when, it’s going to strike.

Steve, he’s beginning to guess, does not like storms in the same way. “We’ll be fine,” Clint assures Steve. His voice comes out quiet in the dim light between them—it’s afternoon but dark clouds have blocked out the sun all the same, and with the car off, there’s no light from the consoles to illuminate anything.

Steve nods. “I know,” he agrees. His voice still sounds tight.

Clint tries to think of how to help; doesn’t question the impulse, really, because it’s a part of who he is. He always wants to help, he’s just not always great at managing it. “You know how I was in the circus?” he asks.

Steve turns to look at him. “Yeah?”

“It was pretty great sometimes,” Clint says. “Pretty awful, too, but when it was good, it was great. You ever see a circus?”

“Once,” Steve says. “Buck and I saved up money for months. Lost it all trying to win a stuffed bear.”

“Did you see any shows?”

Steve nods. “I thought the acrobats were the neatest thing I ever saw.”

Clint grins. “I learned some tricks. I doubt I’d be any good at it now, but as a kid, I was halfway decent.”

“Did you have an outfit?” Steve asks. He looks curious—like he’s forgotten to be anxious, which was Clint’s whole point.

Clint snorts a laugh. “Oh yeah,” he agrees. “It was the sparkliest purple monstrosity—ten times worse than whatever you’re imagining. I loved it.”

Steve grins. “Wish there were pictures.”

Clint shrugs. “I don’t have any, but I bet SHIELD does. They collected everything on me they could find back when they wanted to bring me in.” That sours his mood slightly—thinking of the days before SHIELD, the reason he caught their eye, but also where he’s at now, in some weird limbo, unsure if he’ll ever be trusted enough to be an agent again. If he  _ should  _ be.

He shakes off his bad mood; it kind of even works a little. “Want to know my favorite part of the circus, though?”

Steve nods.

“The animals,” Clint admits. “I know it wasn’t a good place for them—knew it then, even—but I loved them. I used to talk to them and trade chores around so I could clean up their mess. We didn’t have anything big—no tigers or elephants—but it was still great.”

“Tell me about the ones you remember,” Steve prompts.

Clint does. He talks about exotic birds, about teaching someone’s pet parrot words that weren’t curse words—because it already knew plenty of those—but instead silly, juvenile phrases. He talks about the horses and how if he got  _ very  _ lucky and had enough spare coin, he’d get to ride them for a while, bareback, in the more rural areas.

“I always wanted a dog,” Clint admits. “There used to always be a few hanging around; I’d give them scraps from my meals, so they liked me well enough.”

Steve nods. “I was allergic to dogs growing up—cats too. Having an animal would be nice, though, if…”

Clint nods. “Yeah.” He sighs. “Maybe one day.”

He’s starting to think maybe, for him, that  _ one day  _ is closer than not.

“Tell me a story from when you were a kid,” Clint requests.

Steve shrugs, but he opens his mouth and starts talking about one of the many fights he’d gotten in, how he’d been tiny and outnumbered before a bigger boy showed up and chased the bullies away. He’d been spitting mad about it, until the other boy helped him up and taught him the proper way to make a fist—and that’s how he’d met Bucky Barnes.

It should be weird, talking about one of the many elephants in the room.

It’s not. It’s weird that it’s  _ not  _ weird.

“Did you always know?” Clint finds himself asking.

Steve shakes his head. “I didn’t have many dreams that young; he didn’t either. It took us until a bit after we’d already been friends to figure it out.”

Clint nods. He realizes, all at once, that the rain’s trailed off from a dull roar to a quiet murmur. “Oh, we could probably get back on the road,” he says. “If you want.”

Steve nods. “Yeah,” he agrees.

They’ve been on the road for about half an hour, listening to music again and not really talking, when Steve says, “Hey Clint?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Clint doesn’t know what Steve’s thanking him for—the distraction, the stories, or something else entirely. But even without knowing, Clint says, “You’re welcome,” and knows he means it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I'll post once daily.   
Y'all: I CAN'T WAIT FOR MORE  
Me: ...I'll post twice daily!!
> 
> But seriously I'm glad people are enjoying this <3

They see a lot of midwestern skies before they run into the first real problem.

It’s late—after nine, and they’ve been on the road since six. They finally find a motel, but there’s only one room available—and there’s only one bed.

Clint’s kind of past caring at this point, and he’s not even the one who’s done most of the driving. His eyes are itching with tiredness and he’s got a dull throbbing headache in his temple. “Great, thanks,” he tells the guy behind the counter, takes the key and hands over some cash, and leaves with Steve following behind him.

“I can sleep on the floor?” Steve tries to offer as they’re pulling their bags out of the car.

“It’s a king,” Clint points out. “You’re big, yeah, but even you aren’t so big that you can’t share a king with me.”

“I just—”

“Look,” Clint says, cutting Steve off before he can gear himself up to… well, anything. Clint really doesn’t want to handle  _ anything  _ until he’s had at least six hours of sleep and two cups of coffee. “If you’re uncomfortable or whatever, and you want to be sore tomorrow, you can absolutely sleep on the floor. But if you think it’ll bother me, it doesn’t.”

“But we’re—”

Clint opens the door to the room, drops his bag by the bed, and turns to face Steve. “We’re friends. I’ve shared a bed with Nat, and with—” He cuts himself off. “It’s fine with me. But I am going to be asleep in the next five minutes, so whatever you need to decide, do it without any more input from me, okay?”

It’s snappish, yes, but he’s  _ tired. _

He brushes his teeth because he’s not disgusting (or as depressed as he had been), and kicks off his jeans, and then he’s in bed and asleep before his head hits the pillow.

He dreams—less crisp than normal, just a soundtrack of his own voice, pitched slightly different from the way he hears it in his own head, more like a recording, and behind that, random music from the day. He dreams of a car wheel under his hands, of eyes closed in a nap and head pressed against a rattling car window, of fields and sky and nothing—everything—before them.

He wakes up lazily, warm and content—a contentedness that is not only his own, but a bleed-through from his dreams.

He does eventually regain enough consciousness to realize that he’s being cuddled by a very large, very warm body—and that as firm and muscled as that body is, there’s a distinct  _ hardness  _ poking at Clint’s hip.

And, okay, maybe in  _ this  _ moment he gets all of Steve’s hesitance from the night before. Because this? This is a little weird.

It’s weird in a way it wouldn’t be if he was with Nat or—or any other just-a-friend person.

But a glance out the window says it’s just dawn now, and Clint doesn’t want to try to wiggle away and leave in search of coffee. He wants to wrap himself back up in the warm, content feeling he woke up with and sleep for a few more hours.

He’s never been one to make good decisions, anyway. So he falls back asleep and thinks to himself,  _ whatever, I’ll deal with this all later. _

**

When he wakes up later, it’s to Steve sitting up in bed next to him, back against the headboard, sipping coffee in a takeaway cup. On the table beside Clint, there’s another cup that he  _ hopes  _ is still hot. (Not that he wouldn’t drink it cold; of course he would. But he’d prefer it hot just the same.)

Clint pushes himself up and snags the cup—still warm, which is promising. “Did you go out?”

Steve nods. “Found a coffee shop. Got some bagels, too.”

Clint smiles. “Thanks.” He takes a sip of the coffee and it’s perfect. It would be hard to mess up, he supposes, given that he drinks it black, but it’s a medium roast like he prefers, too.

It’s absolutely not a big deal that Steve knows his coffee order—they eat breakfast together  _ every day. _

The butterflies in his stomach disagree with that logic, though.

They haven’t done much sight-seeing, have spent most of their days cooped up in the car, so they decide to take a day and explore the small town they’ve ended up in. They poke around thrift stores—and, yes, Clint does make a handful of comments about stuff looking  _ even older than you, Steve, wow!— _ and laze around in parks looking at dogs on walks, and stop in a kitschy café for lunch.

Steve convinces Clint to go to a place that’s  _ nice,  _ if not fancy, for dinner, a place that Clint knows they are 100% underdressed for. The people at the host stand try to glare at them, but quickly realize once Steve removes his ballcap—which is still  _ not  _ a good disguise, and Clint’s honestly offended by how often it works—and they realize they’ve got an underdressed  _ Captain America  _ in their establishment.

The food is fine. Clint likes his food greasy and fried or home-cooked, likes family-owned restaurants over posh places and chains, but it’s fine.

If it feels like a  _ date,  _ well. That’s no one’s fault more so than his own, because he knows better than to read into whatever’s between him and Steve.

_ Steve already had a soulmate,  _ he reminds himself. While Steve may be, well,  _ it,  _ for Clint, that doesn’t mean Clint’s the same thing for Steve.

And it’s fine. Clint genuinely, honestly, would rather have Steve in his life than fuck up whatever they do have by wanting more.

Between them, they drink two bottles of over-priced wine (it’s going on Stark’s credit card, anyway), although Clint doubts it does as much for Steve as it does for him.

It does mean, though, that when they’re walking back to the hotel, Clint gets caught up looking at the way Steve’s hair glows in the dull light of the street lamps, and he doesn’t catch himself before he can reach out and snag Steve’s hand, tangling their fingers together.

Honestly, he doesn’t even realize he’s  _ done it  _ until Steve’s fingers curl around his in return, and he’s hit with a shock of  _ oh, that’s nice. _

It’s just… casual intimacy isn’t a thing he’s ever really been on the receiving end of.

That’s all it is. That’s all it can be. And it’s enough.

When he tumbles into bed, he’s a little too drunk to figure out his shoe laces—how much of that wine did he drink by himself?  _ Jesus— _ but Steve huffs a soft laugh and helps him out of his clothes, guides him into bed. He’s awake long enough to see Steve set out a glass of water on the bedside table next to him, long enough to whisper, “Thanks,” but not long enough to hear if Steve says anything in reply.

**

Clint asks Steve if he wants to see Mount Rushmore while they’re passing near the Dakotas.

He receives, in reply, a truly epic social justice rant.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he comments, passing the exit they would’ve taken had Steve said yes.

“Definitely a no,” Steve agrees.

**

They do less in the Midwest than they could, because once Steve gets Clint to voice a preference, he admits that, for him personally, growing up in the Midwest was enough time spent there.

**

The first time their collective breath gets taken away is when they approach the Rocky Mountains. Clint’s seen the Appalachian Mountains—he thinks Steve probably, maybe, has too—but these mountains are different, breath-taking in a unique way.

They go to Yellowstone, drive around and then admit they don’t want to leave, purchase overpriced camping gear and hike and camp and spend a week being awed by nature.

It’s one of the most peaceful weeks of Clint’s life.

He absolutely doesn’t think about how he’d been right before—there’s joy in seeing something beautiful, sublime, but he’s happiest watching Steve’s awe instead.

**

They move on eventually, through Idaho and Utah and Nevada. The Rocky Mountains are, again,  _ mountains— _ Clint hadn’t realized a mountain range could be so distinct from another, so pretty.

Steve lets Clint drive more and more, using his time as a passenger to sketch the ranges on the horizon.

Steve’s landscapes are beautiful, and Clint contemplates asking for one but doesn’t know how. (Briefly, he contemplates stealing one, but—no.)

The time passes in a blink, and yet the lack of deadline or need to rush or agenda to follow makes it also seem infinite—Clint finds it hard to keep track of how long they’ve been on the road, finds it impossible to estimate when they might be done.

It feels, honestly, like it will never end.

(Clint wishes, in quiet moments, that it never had to end. That it could just be  _ this  _ forever, traveling and discovering new sights, spending time with Steve, falling endlessly more in love.

He wouldn’t admit to it, though. He barely admits it to himself.)

**

The moment Clint realizes he’s in love with Steve Rogers is an innocuous one. They’re at their millionth diner. They’ve made it a mission to try every diner and diner-adjacent establishment in their path in an effort to rank them all from best to worst, and so far it’s going well. This diner is average—neither sensational nor disgusting, just… good enough.

It’s not the food that matters, anyway—that won’t be what Clint remembers, when he remembers this moment, except in the most tangential of ways.

Instead, it’s the fact that Steve gets whipped cream from his vanilla milkshake—vanilla, because Steve insists it is the best of all flavors in its simplicity, and the best judge of quality in a dessert—on his nose. He makes a face when Clint laughs at him, and then tries to lick it off with his tongue, looking ridiculous as he does, before he finally caves and wipes it off with a spare napkin. The slight twinkle in his eyes, the hint of a flush to his cheeks, the grin that’s somehow self-conscious and self-satisfied… all of it combines to represent the person Clint’s come to know.

To know, and to love.

It hits him, in that moment, and he doesn’t feel good or bad about it. If anything, it’s bittersweet.

Because, here’s the thing. He didn’t expect or need or even want to have a soulmate. But Steve is his soulmate, and Clint loves him.

That doesn’t mean Clint expects anything between them to change. There are plenty of platonic soulmates out there. Clint loves being Steve’s friend, loves knowing they’re connected by something bigger than all of this—be it fate or some other nebulous cosmic force—but he doesn’t expect Steve to love him back.

Or, if Steve does, he doesn’t expect Steve to love him the way he wants.

But that’s fine; that’s not how Clint’s life works out, anyway, not ever.  _ This,  _ what he has now, is more than he’d ever thought he’d get. It would be greedy and selfish to crave more than what he has; so, for the most part, he doesn’t.

**

The California coast is maybe Clint’s favorite place they’ve been. There’s something about the atmosphere—the blue of the water, deep and pure in contrast to the east coast’s grayer waters; the salt in the air; the rhythmic crash of waves against the shore; the actual fine granules of sand under Clint’s bare feet… it’s peaceful.

Another nice thing about the California coast: walking along the sand in the early morning sunrise, coffee in one hand, other hand tangled with Steve’s.

Hand-holding is a  _ thing  _ now, a thing that they do, and it makes Clint feel euphoric and content in a way he’s never felt with another person before.

It almost makes him wonder what kind of mind-blowing experience  _ kissing  _ Steve would be, before he shuts that thought down, because they are  _ just friends. _

Clint asks if they can make their way slowly down the coast, so they do, spending more time on the beach than off it, eating all the seafood they come across.

One night, they’re watching the sun set behind the water, colors refracting against the waves, holding hands, and Clint feels so happy, he thinks he might explode.

He turns to look at Steve, only to find Steve looking at him, a soft smile on his face. “What?” Clint asks. “Is there something in my teeth?”

Steve laughs softly and shakes his head. “No.”

He’s quiet for a moment, just looking at Clint—looking for all the world as if that’s the only thing he wants to do, as if Clint’s in some way better to look at than the gorgeous sunset they’re supposedly watching, and it’s  _ doing things  _ to Clint’s insides. Then he asks, so softly that Clint can almost pretend his mind’s playing tricks on him and making up the words, “Can I kiss you?”

Clint can almost convince himself he’s making it up, except he  _ sees  _ Steve’s lips move, reads the words as they’re spoken.

This is  _ real. _

“Me?” he asks weakly, the question genuine as much as he’s stalling for a moment to figure out  _ what  _ to do, to say, in response.

Steve lets go of Clint’s hand, and Clint feels bereft for a moment. But then Steve’s large hand is cupping Clint’s cheek, fingers firm against Clint’s jaw, and he’s still staring at Clint so intently that Clint feels like Steve can see  _ all  _ of him, every last broken and haphazardly glued together piece. “Yes,” Steve replies, his voice confident, steady. “You.”

There’s a lump in Clint’s throat; he can’t say anything, doesn’t trust his voice to work. It’s only when Steve’s thumb swipes across his cheekbone that he realizes he’s crying, softly, quietly, helplessly. He nods, the motion jerky, but Steve must read the truth of the aching  _ want  _ in Clint’s expression, because he leans in.

It’s not fireworks when their lips meet—nothing so cliché, but also nothing so momentary. It’s not a flash, there and gone again; instead, it’s like Clint’s spent his whole life asleep, and only in  _ this moment  _ is he suddenly waking up. Every nerve ending is alive, singing. He could live in this moment forever.

He doesn’t know how long they kiss for; it could be moments or minutes; it feels like a small but vast infinity.

When they break apart, Clint is breathless. Steve doesn’t go far, leans his forehead against Clint’s, hand still cupping Clint’s jaw, and breathes with him.

**

They don’t talk about it that night. Steve tries to, but Clint isn’t ready. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready to talk about it, but  _ never  _ seems like it might get vetoed, so he asks for a few days to get his thoughts in order.

Those days are filled with hand-holding and soft kisses and feeling Steve’s eyes on him, catching Steve looking at him, all the time.

Clint starts to believe that this might be  _ real;  _ that Steve might genuinely  _ like  _ him in a distinctly more-than-friends kind of way.

It’s mind-boggling.

It makes Clint uncharacteristically shy, hesitant. But also… happy?

On the third evening after the kiss, they’re in Santa Barbara, when they run into the now familiar, if infrequent, problem of finding only one bed.

They could look for another place to stay. But they don’t.

Clint finds himself faced with the reality of one bed in a cutesy, doily-adorned room with heart-shaped pillows on the bed that must be for decoration, because they’re too small and unwieldy to sleep with, and he caves to the inevitable. “Okay,” he says, stepping past the bed to set down his duffle bag near the wall. “We should talk about it.”

Steve looks triumphant—the tilt of his not-quite-smile says  _ I told you so— _ but all he does is nod and say, “Okay, now?”

Clint’s stomach rumbles. He glances down at it, betrayed, and Steve laughs at whatever the expression on Clint’s face is.

“We can order pizza?” Steve suggests.

“That’s not fair,” Clint protests. “You can’t say shit like that. Then I just want to kiss you instead of talking.”

Steve grins, wide and a little wicked. “We could do that, too.”

Clint considers it. But… he almost doesn’t want to go any further  _ without  _ talking about it. He knows Steve well enough to know that Steve would never hurt him on purpose, but he also knows he’s one push away from falling apart again, and maybe if he’s going to make a choice that might destroy him, he should at least find out how risky it is before he commits to it. “Talking,” Clint says on a sigh. “But then kissing after?” He is, after all, only a man.

Steve’s smile softens. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Sounds like a plan.”

They each take a side of the bed—and they have done this enough times to know that Clint likes to sleep on the side furthest from the door but nearest to a window, and to adjust accordingly without needing to discuss it—and Clint pulls out his phone, Googling the local pizza places to try to find out which one has the best reviews. He reads them out to Steve, and they finally settle on one and call in an order.

Then: silence.

Clint can feel Steve’s warmth across the few inches of space between them; he wants to press closer.

He doesn’t.

Finally, he opens his mouth and says the first words that come to mind. “I still don’t know how to have a soulmate.”

Steve nods slowly. “I don’t think anyone does, the first time.”

It’s… not bittersweet, but comforting and cutting simultaneously. That it’s okay to be unsure—but beneath it, the reminder that Steve  _ has  _ done this before. “I thought you didn’t want another soulmate?”

“I didn’t,” Steve says, and Clint can’t help the sharp intake of breath he draws in at those words. In response, Steve reaches across the space between them, tangling his fingers with Clint’s. He soothes his thumb over the space between Clint’s own thumb and forefinger, a calming motion. It doesn’t do much to quell the hurt, but it does help. “But now… You.”

“Me,” Clint agrees. “ _ Why  _ me?”

Steve looks at him, head tilted, considering. “I like you,” he says. “I like your dumb jokes and your desire to help everyone, even when—especially when—you’re not at your best. I like that you helped me feel  _ alive  _ again, and that I…” He trails off, but Clint waits. He’s good at waiting—sniper training—and more than that, he  _ needs  _ to have all the information Steve can give him. Can’t draw conclusions on piecemeal intel, after all.

“I want to keep sharing that with you,” Steve says after a moment. He’s looking away from Clint now, down at their joined hands, thumb still stroking against Clint’s skin rhythmically. “Life. My life. If you wanted.”

“I don’t understand,” Clint admits.

“What part?”

“All of it.” Steve shoots Clint a half-hearted glare, and Clint huffs. “Okay, you like me, that’s—awesome. But… Bucky.”

“I loved him,” Steve says, like it’s easy, certain, the kind of truth you build your life around. “I still do, and I always will. But… that doesn’t mean I can’t have feelings for you. I can love him, and miss him, and still like you, and  _ want  _ you.”

“But what if it’s just…” Clint trails off. He doesn’t know how to make the swirling doubts in his head into words.

“Because we’re soulmates?” Steve asks, finishing the thought for him. It’s as good of a direction as any for them to go in, so Clint nods. “I dunno,” Steve says, after a moment’s thought. “But I don’t like you  _ because  _ we’re soulmates. I didn’t expect to have another soulmate, or to want another soulmate. But… I do. I  _ like  _ you. I like that we’re soulmates. I want this.”

Clint feels, in some ways, like Steve’s words are crashing against the brick wall of his insecurities. Weakening them, maybe, but they’re more indominable than his assurances.

But if he tries to be  _ reasonable,  _ and he is trying, so very hard, to be reasonable, because he desperately wants to find a way to make this work—then he can acknowledge that.. it  _ is  _ working. Steve wants him. He wants Steve. That is, at a very basic level, everything Clint told himself he wasn’t hoping for.

“So… what  _ are  _ we, then?”

Steve shrugs. “Whatever we want to be.”

“Okay, but what does that  _ mean?” _

Steve shrugs again. “You would know better than I would how a modern relationship works.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “You can’t play the old man card to get out of every hard decision,” he grouses. He feels a bit lighter for it, though—for this breath of fresh air from the heavy weight that’s been on his chest, the weight of their talk made physical.

“I think you’ll find I can.” Steve grins at him, a little sly, head still tilted slightly in question. “I’ve talked plenty,” he points out after a moment. “What do  _ you  _ want?”

And that’s the question, isn’t it? Not only what does Clint want, but what can he  _ afford  _ to want? What can he allow himself the vulnerability of admitting?

“You.” It’s one word—it shouldn’t be so hard to say.

It is. It is hard to say. But he says it.

And he feels… lighter, once it’s in the air between them.

“Good,” Steve says, smiling a sunrise smile. “Then we can figure out the rest as we go.”

“Just like that?” Clint asks, dubious of the simplicity of that plan.

“Sure. Why not?”

Clint could list a bunch of reasons  _ why not,  _ but before he can, there’s a knock at the door. It startles Clint; he doesn’t jump, but he does tense a little, thrown off track.

“Pizza,” Steve says, climbing off of the bed and digging through his pocket for his wallet.

Clint contemplates his next move while Steve pays the delivery guy and drops the greasy boxes on the bed. He could keep speaking his doubts into the world; it might even be nice, to see if,  _ how,  _ Steve might counter them.

Or he can shove pizza into his face at an alarming rate, matching in ferocity by Steve, who has more manners but also an insatiable hunger and has learned that he doesn’t need to be polite when it’s just the two of them. He can devour pizza and then make out with Steve like they don’t have garlic breath, and maybe, if he’s super lucky, they can fall asleep tangled together instead of starting out apart and migrating closer in their sleep.

So he does.

**

They wind their way across the South of the United States, and Clint learns a few things. There’s unexpected beauty in deserts and rock formations; everything really  _ is  _ bigger in Texas; Steve will shiver deliciously if Clint kisses the spot just behind his jaw and under his ear.

He’s so happy it hurts, but every day brings them closer to the end of this escape and back to reality. The  _ reality  _ is that Clint doesn’t know what to do—what he should do, what he can do, what he wants to do; they’re all tangled up in a hopeless mess of confusion that weighs on him more and more with the passing of each day.

He gets quiet, moody, in a way he hasn’t been for a while. Steve makes an effort to draw him out of his own head—succeeds, more or less—and doesn’t press him to talk.

Clint kind of wishes Steve would press him to talk, even as he’s relieved every time Steve opens his mouth to ask, hesitates, and then closes it again. But if Steve could help to drag these thoughts out of Clint, maybe together, they could make sense of them.

In the end, though, that seems like too much to just  _ ask  _ for. It’s Clint’s problem, and he’ll solve it himself.

Maybe. Eventually. After he avoids it for a while.

_ Just one more day,  _ he thinks to himself, and  _ one more day  _ turns into a week turns into a month turns into: they’re in Washington DC, and they “run into” Nick Fury at a coffee shop just off of the National Mall.

Clint laughs as he watches Steve running laps around some poor guy jogging on the pathways of the National Mall one morning.

By perfect chance, the mystery stranger gives up the ghost and slumps down, gasping for air, against the very tree Clint is perched in. Clint doesn’t say anything, just watches at Steve approaches.

Steve knows he’s there, but doesn’t glance up even once to give away Clint’s perch—maybe Clint can make a spy of him yet. Or, more likely, Steve’s just very good at fucking with people.

Clint waits until they’re shaking hands to drop down out of the tree. “I’m Clint,” he greets, grinning when the man lets out a startled yelp.

Steve rolls his eyes and slings an arm over Clint’s shoulders. “My soulmate,” Steve says, half agreement and half introduction.

The man—Sam, he said his name was—points at both of them, accusatory. “You knew he was there, didn’t you?” Sam demands.

Steve shrugs. “Well, yeah.”

Sam huffs, but there’s a smile tugging at his lips. “The two of you must be a handful,” he comments. “I bet you terrorize all your friends.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “A person would have to be pretty crazy to befriend us, or at least pretty stubborn to put up with us.”

“I’ll bet,” Sam agrees. “So, you assholes gonna take me out for an apology breakfast?”

Clint likes Sam. Sam can stay.

He laughs and listens as Steve and Sam begin bickering over who should pay for breakfast—Steve points out that he won “the race,” and Sam holds that it wasn’t a formal competition, and anyway, Steve’s the asshole here—and thinks that maybe fate, the universe, cosmic forces, whatever, has a way of putting people in your life when you need them.

He doesn’t, at the time, know just how right he is—just  _ how  _ lucky they are that they met Sam when they did.

\--

When things turn to shit, they turn fast.

It starts with an innocuous statement.

Clint, fresh from a night of nightmares, is sitting on the couch with a pot of coffee, hearing aids out. He’s watching cartoons with the captions on, not really paying attention to the bright colors on the screen of the TV, mostly lost in his own head.

Steve stumbles out of the bedroom a few minutes after his alarm goes off, and he passes Clint his hearing aids as he moves through the living room to the kitchen.

Clint has slipped them in by the time Steve returns with his own mug of coffee and a plate of toast. Clint snags a piece and nibbles on it, stomach turning slightly when the food hits it, still nauseous from bad sleep and worse dreams.

“Nightmares?” Steve asks.

Clint nods, sighs loudly. “Yeah.”

“I had nightmares too,” Steve admits. “But they were… weird.”

“Want to talk about it?” Clint offers. It might be nice, he thinks, to focus on Steve’s problems, to stop dwelling on his own for a bit.

Steve chews thoughtfully. “Yeah,” he says, after he swallows. “I just… wasn’t  _ me  _ in the dream? But the person I was, they were… empty. It was like I was no one at all.” He rubs a hand over his face, sighs. “I don’t know, it’s dumb, but it felt… cold.”

Clint himself feels cold. A chill has been building inside of him since Steve started talking.

Because.

What if…

No. It’s not possible.

…is it?

“Tell me about the dream.” He doesn’t recognize his own voice. Part of that is how he feels distant, far away from himself, but part of it is the firmness, the  _ fear. _

Steve looks confused, but he does. At least, he must. Clint can see his lips moving, and he’s seeing in his head the things Steve is saying.

But the thing is, he’s not  _ imagining  _ them. He’s not creating pictures from the words Steve tells him. He’s  _ remembering  _ his own nightmares from last night.

Just nightmares, right?

But if they were  _ just  _ nightmares, then how come Steve had them too? How can they be the same, down to every last detail, down to the small nick on the knife in whoever’s hand?

“Holy shit,” Clint breathes out, cutting Steve off mid-sentence. “Holy shit, Steve, how did Bucky die?”


	3. Chapter 3

Clint calls Natasha. It goes to voicemail. He curses, hangs up without leaving a message, and resumes pacing around the living room of their apartment, tugging at his hair.

How could he have been so stupid? He’s had the dreams since he was a kid—how could he have convinced himself they were  _ anything  _ other than what they are?

If he’d known…

“Clint, this is impossible,” Steve says, from where he’s sitting on the couch. He’s got a blanket wrapped around his shoulders; Clint dropped it there when he coaxed Steve into talking about Bucky.

Steve is not convinced. That’s okay; Clint’s convinced enough for the both of them. “Look, I don’t know  _ how,  _ exactly,” Clint says. “I just know that no one’s ever had a quad of soulmates before, and you’ve already got another soulmate, and we  _ know  _ who he is.”

Steve’s quiet for a few minutes while Clint continues to pace, mind turning in the same circles as his steps. “It didn’t… feel like Bucky, though,” Steve says, quiet.

Clint stops and looks at Steve. He distances himself from his own guilt and fear and allows himself the clarity of seeing how  _ scared  _ Steve is. How Steve’s not resisting, not just being stubborn, for the hell of it. Because if that  _ is  _ Bucky, then…

Well, then what?

Clint crosses the room to Steve, drops down onto his knees in front of where Steve’s seated on the couch. Clint reaches out and gently rests his palms face down on Steve’s crossed knees. “We will get him back,” Clint promises. His voice is low, fervent. He’s only heard it sound this way once, and those promises were to Natasha. That’s the only other moment in his life where he’d ever been this sincere.

“How do we find him?”

Clint thinks. The answer comes to him, unwanted. He sighs. “We need Tony.”

**

Tony is all too happy to hear from them. He’s even happy to help them.

It doesn’t take him long to uncover what they need. Less than a week.

Unfortunately, by the time he has what they need, they’re off the grid, trying to avoid the Winter Soldier—because of course Bucky Barnes would be the  _ fucking  _ Winter Soldier; of course Clint’s other  _ soulmate  _ would be the Winter Soldier, what the fuck—who is in turn trying to kill them.

They’re walking down the street when the a payphone rings as they pass it.

Clint glances at it. “I totally watched that show,” he says. Sighs. Says, “Watch my back,” and ducks inside to take the call.

“I can’t believe you made me act out this ridiculous show,” Tony grouses, without even saying hello. “SHIELD is HYDRA. Not sure how deep it goes. I’m in the suit, ETA 30 minutes. Find Fury and ask him about Insight. If he lies, he goes down with them.”

Clint processes the information rapidly, because Tony says the words “SHIELD is HYDRA” and Clint shuts off his emotional responses. Just for now—just long enough that he can strategize.

In the end, he trusts Tony Stark more than he ever trusted SHIELD, which maybe says a few things. “Okay,” he agrees. “You know how to find me.”

Tony snorts. “I’m not calling any more payphones. Get a burner or something.”

“No time,” Clint points out, rather than just argue that Stark having Jarvis hack cameras to track them and then route a call through the nearest payphone is just  _ super cool.  _ “Find us when you’re here.”

**

There’s a fight with the Winter Soldier on a highway—it’s some  _ ridiculous  _ bullshit—and Clint’s doing his best to dodge the  _ literal cars  _ his two soulmates can fling at one another. He wishes desperately that he had his bow, but the only bows he has left are all back at the Tower.

As if Tony hears that thought, he appears, drops one of Clint’s bows and a full and enlarged quiver full of arrows into his hands, and then swoops over to help Steve try not to get killed.

Clint knows that, if it came down to it, Steve would let the Winter Soldier kill him, because Steve could never bring himself to kill whatever is left of Bucky Barnes.

He’s trying very hard not to think about it.

Tony shoots a repulsor blast at Bucky, and fucking  _ Steve  _ blocks it with his shield, skidding back a few yards on the street.

Clint nocks an arrow, an EMP tip—thank you, Tony—and shoots it at the Winter Soldier.

The Winter Soldier  _ catches the arrow.  _ What the fuck. Clint blinks, and then remembers, just before the Soldier moves to toss it aside, that he needs to trigger the EMP.

Tony’s yards away with Steve, and Clint hopes like hell the EMP is localized, or else Tony’s going to be pissy as hell.

He triggers it.

The Soldier’s arm goes dead.

Clint pulls a tranq arrow and manages to hit the Soldier with it; it seems like he tries to use his metal arm to block it, not yet used to the arm not responding. The Soldier yanks out the tranq arrow and begins to advance on Clint.

He doesn’t slow down.

Fuck.

Clint scrambles away, because even an arm down, he’s pretty sure this caliber of legendary assassin could still kill him.

Nat appears, screeching up in a vehicle with Fury behind the wheel and Hill in the backseat. She distracts the Soldier, and Hill runs to Steve and Tony, and Fury makes eye contact with Clint.

The Soldier escapes.

Steve’s fine—a little scraped up from hitting the pavement, a couple nicks from the Soldier’s blade—and Tony’s suit is fine, but that doesn’t stop him from being pissed.

He starts shouting at Fury, right there in front of wrecked cars and injured civilians, and Clint… is done.

He’s overwhelmed. He’s tired. He’s… a lot of things, and all of them add up to:  _ done. _

He realizes, distantly, that he’s laughing. He laughs until he cries, until he feels Nat’s fingers against his cheeks. He knows it’s Nat, because she’s rougher with him than Steve is. “Pull yourself together,” she tells him quietly. “He needs you.”

“Where were you?” he asks her. It comes out more accusatory than he means it to, and exactly as accusatory as he feels.

After a long pause, she says, “I got here as soon as I could.”

Clint closes his eyes and doesn’t tell her whether or not that’s good enough. At the moment, he doesn’t know. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

**

In the end, Tony goes with Fury and Maria to Fury’s safe house—Clint suspects this is more so that Tony can keep an eye on Fury, who he absolutely does not trust, than because of whatever tech Fury swears they have—and Steve, Nat, and Clint have to go… somewhere.

Steve refuses to go to the safe house with the others. He says it’s strategic, that having all of the people they trust to handle this in one place would be dangerous and make them more vulnerable. Clint’s pretty sure that he’s full of shit, and in reality he just doesn’t want to deal with Tony  _ or  _ Fury right now, not after yelling at each in turn for an hour.

Clint’s tired. He doesn’t really care where they go.

And that’s the crux of the problem: where do they go? They can’t go to his and Steve’s apartment, or to Nat’s, and so they’re kind of stumped for options.

When Clint comes up with the idea, he laughs, a short bark of a noise. “Steve, d’you know where Sam lives?”

So, they go to Sam’s. Sam blinks at them all on the porch, as Steve fumbles through an explanation that  _ things  _ are happening and Clint, talking over him, just says, “Can we crash here for a bit?”

Sam shrugs and opens the door wider, allowing them in. “I should have known that this was the kind of thing I was signing up for,” he grouses, but he smiles at each of them, so Clint doesn’t think he’s all that bothered.

The first thing Clint does is say, “Hey, Sam, do you have a bedroom where I can crash until approximately the heat death of the universe, or the end of eternity, whichever comes first?”

Sam rolls his eyes but says, “Yeah, down the hall on the right.”

Clint finds it, takes in nothing but the fact that there is a  _ bed.  _ Steve can keep himself going by sheer force of will and supersoldier stamina, but Clint’s a human, and he’s exhausted.

He’s asleep before his head hits the pillow.

**

He dreams as Steve. It’s horrible, because he can feel all of Steve’s confusion and anger and heartbreak and  _ hope,  _ and he hates it.

And, yes, he can feel how Steve would rather let Bucky kill him than risk hurting Bucky by fighting offensively rather than just defensively, and,  _ fuck,  _ Clint could have gone his whole life without being forced to feel those feelings and know they’re Steve’s.

In all, he wakes up only marginally less exhausted than when he went to bed, but… well, he wakes up. That’s the good news for the day.

He spares a moment to wonder if they let the Winter Soldier sleep, if he shared Clint’s dreams and experienced Steve’s reality. Somehow, Clint doubts it, though.

A glance out the window shows that it’s daybreak of the next day, so he slept something like thirteen hours—fuck. He wanders out of the spare room and pokes through the house, looking for the others.

He can hear soft snores coming from a bedroom, but doesn’t peek inside—by process of elimination, it has to be Sam, and Clint’s not going to sneak around in Sam’s private spaces when the man’s unconscious. He’s too grateful to Sam for taking them in when they’re more or less wanted fugitives.

Nat and Steve are at Sam’s kitchen table, pouring over files they got from somewhere. Clint ignores them both and goes for the coffee.

He feels a knot of unpleasant emotions when he looks at either of them, right now, all fear and resentment tangled up in anger and unease, and then for an extra layer of yuck, he feels guilty for having all of those feelings.

He thinks, maybe, he should have used his free time to go to therapy. He doesn’t know what kind of therapist would have been trained to handle a case like him, but maybe he’d be sharper, more focused, now, if he had tried.

He can’t ignore them forever, so he hops up onto the counter, lounging idly, and sips his coffee. He takes the opportunity to study them.

They work well together; they’re not like the duo that is Clint-and-Natasha, but Clint wouldn’t expect that of either of them. He knows they’ve partnered in the field before, though, and they’re on the Avengers together. There’s clearly trust between them, some knowledge of each other’s skills and tactics—a kind of mutual respect.

That goes a short way toward settling Clint in his skin again, toward calming the knot of tangled emotions inside of him. He’s known, logically, that they have each other’s backs; it’s something special to  _ see  _ it, though. Seeing is believing—maybe not for everyone, but the adage definitely rings true for Clint.

“Morning,” he greets eventually, when the coffee has begun to soothe away the sharpest pulses of his headache. “What are we looking at?”

Steve offers him a small smile. It’s distracted and half-hearted, but he’s trying, and Clint can’t begrudge him that. “Intel Fury and Tony dug up on… the Winter Soldier.” He pauses before he says Bucky’s assassin moniker, but Clint doesn’t make anything of it.

“I dreamed last night,” he says instead. “Not as him, though. As you.”

Steve’s eyes look pained at that. “Oh?”

Nat, though, gets where Clint is going. “It only matters if they let him sleep,” she points out.

“I know,” Clint tells her. “I just thought it might be relevant info to have.”

She nods once. “Come help us sort through these files. Your German is better than mine.”

He snorts but obliges, squeezing into the space between them. Most of the files are in Russian—and yes, Nat’s obviously better than him there, no contest—but there’s a handful of German ones. “You speak German too,” he says.

“You’re better,” Nat says, brushing that aside.

“Not for a while,” Steve says at the same time.

They both pause and turn to look at each other, evaluating. Clint cracks a grin. “Okay,” he agrees, because he was mostly just fucking with them anyway. “Let’s get started.”

**

Sam joins them at 9 in the morning. Clint’s seen Sam run with Steve at 5 or 6 am, so he knows Sam must have been kept up by the trouble twins the night before.

(And, no, it’s only a  _ little  _ bit a knife in Clint’s gut that Steve’s taken his place in the duo of SHIELD’s trouble twins. Steve is, at least,  _ so much trouble:  _ a worthy successor.)

Clint clambers to his feet and nudges Sam into the space he’d been occupying at the table. He gets coffee, pops some toast in, and says, “D’you have eggs? I can make eggs.”

Sam eyes him warily. “What is this?” he asks, gesturing at Clint.

Nat rolls her eyes. “He’s in a rare helpful mood. Let him.”

Clint would smack her upside the head, but she’d dodge it and hit him back twice as hard, so he settles for glowering at her. “I’m grateful. I am expressing my gratefulness like a polite human.”

Sam chokes on a mouthful of coffee. “Okay,” he says slowly. “But, Barton, you  _ aren’t  _ a polite human.”

“Stress brings it out in him,” Nat says. “Now, hush, I’m reading.”

Steve’s moved on from reading to drawing out impressively comprehensive plans for every altercation he can think of—which is a lot, considering they have nothing to go on and no way to narrow the field of potentials.

Clint does, in fact, make eggs. It’s less being helpful and more a way to expend his restless energy. And, okay, maybe it  _ is  _ a little bit that he’s feeling help _ less,  _ and that doing anything makes him feel somewhat purposeful again.

He knows Nat reads all of this in every movement he makes. He appreciates that she keeps the observations to herself and only ever bothers giving others simple, if inaccurate, explanations for his actions.

Sam takes the first bite of eggs and lets out an indecent moan. “Shit, you can cook,” he half comments, half compliments.

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “Which is good, ‘cause Steve can’t cook for shit.”

Steve doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t even look away from his scheming. Sam glances at him and then back at Clint, shrugging once. Clint tries not to be disappointed and just shrugs back.

“Guess I’m sitting on your lap, then,” he tells Sam, since no one’s pay attention anyway.

“Oh no you’re not,” Sam counters. “You’re built like a brick wall. I ain’t having that kind of weight crushing me just so you have somewhere to sit.”

Clint rolls his eyes at Sam but resumes sitting on the counter. He doesn’t say anything, giving Sam a chance to eat and not wanting to distract the others, but it just makes his thoughts turn in circles.

When Sam’s done, he pushes away his plate and says, “Okay, so, how can I help?”

_ That  _ makes Clint for real for the first time since this whole mess started. Nat looks appraising, and Steve looks stunned.

“No, this isn’t—” Steve starts. “I mean, you shouldn’t have to—”

“What can you do?” Clint asks, talking over Steve.

“I mean, I told y’all I was air force,” Sam says. “But I never said what I flew.”

Nat’s eyes narrow; she’s always got the best intel and a superior ability to make intuitive leaps. Clint and Steve aren’t on that level, though, so Clint just prompts, “Tell us.”

**

They break into a US Air Force base to steal a pair of wings for Sam. Tony insists he could build some—better ones, even—but is forced to admit that he’s a little busy and would need his workshop, which is, y’know, in New York.

It’s honestly not even that eventful. No one gets injured, no one dies, and they’re probably not any more wanted by the government than they were before (except for Sam), so… all in a day’s work.

**

With no way to track down the Winter Soldier—not that Tony has given up trying—they tackle Insight first. Fury tries to take control of that mission, and Steve immediately shuts him down.

So Steve takes control, and Maria chimes in, and Fury glowers in a corner but agrees to his part, and Clint eventually asks, “Okay, but what do I do?”

They all turn to look at him. No one seems to want to be the one to speak.

Finally, it’s Steve that says, “You said you didn’t want to fight anymore.”

And Clint  _ knows  _ Steve means well, but it feels an awful lot like having his own words turned against him. So he’s not at all nice when he says, “Well, he’s my fucking soulmate too, and if we attack HYDRA, it’s us he’s going to be coming after. You think HYDRA will let either of his soulmates live?”

Steve goes white. “That’s not—” he says. “He wouldn’t—”

Clint raises an eyebrow. “It’s not up for debate, Steve. Just…” he sighs. “I’m in this. Find a way to make my involvement worthwhile.”

Steve nods, although the twist at the corner of his mouth says he’s unhappy about it. But from then on, Clint’s factored into the planning.

**

They set the plan for the next day. And they survive the night. It’s not enough to make Clint optimistic about their chances—they’re up against the full power of SHIELD, and HYDRA, and above all of that the legendary Winter Soldier—but it’s nice to not die in their sleep.

He reflects, a few hours later, that maybe dying in their sleep would have been easier.

“Tony!” he calls. “Drop me on the last helicarrier!”

“Not now, Birdbrain.” There’s a clip to Tony’s words—not like he’s angry, but like he’s clenching his jaw.

“Yes, now!”

Tony swoops up to his perch, grabs him and gets him yards away from the helicarrier. He throws Clint on deck and zips away before he even sees Clint’s body make contact.

He did what Clint asked, though, so Clint’s not gonna complain.

Well, he does mutter a sarcastic, “Thanks,” under his breath, and it probably gets projected over the comms, but Tony will take it the way it’s meant—as more sincere than either of them wants to be when they’re in the thick of it.

Clint finds the Winter Soldier punching the shit out of Steve, and he wants to handle that, but… he can’t.

So he handles disabling the helicarrier  _ first,  _ and only when it’s under Maria’s control does he approach the Steve-and-Bucky shitshow that’s happening.

“Hey!” Clint calls out from a few yards away. “Soldat.”

The Soldier freezes. He turns to look at Clint, and confusion crosses his face. “I know you,” he says, soft, questioning.

Clint shrugs. “Kinda,” he agrees. “From your dreams.”

“Bucky,” Steve starts, through his split lip and swollen face.

“Shut up,” Clint tells him sharply. “You’re not helping.”

The Soldier looks between Clint and Steve. “He’s my mission,” the Soldier says, glancing up at Clint.

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “But aren’t you sick of following orders?”

The Soldier shakes his head, and the movement is jerky, sharp.

Clint shrugs. “Okay,” he agrees. “Then you’d better kill us both, because I can’t let you kill him.”

The Soldier flinches at that. “But I know you,” he says, like that’s what’s important.

“You know him too, even if you don’t remember,” Clint tells him. “But neither of us is gonna stop you from completing your mission.”

“Clint,” Steve says, “what the fuck.”

Clint’s aware of voices talking through the comm, but he doesn’t listen. “Don’t be a fucking hypocrite, Rogers,” he bites out. “Soldat. Make your choice.”

The Soldier pulls a gun and levels it at Clint. He looks steadier with a gun in his hand.

“No!” Steve shouts, struggling to knock the Soldier off course. The Soldier barely moves, and the gun remains steady in his hands.

Clint meets his eyes, quirks an eyebrow, and waits.

The thing is.

If this is his end, he’s at peace with it. Because for all he knows that he  _ couldn’t  _ have known about what was happening to Bucky Barnes, couldn’t have stopped it even if he had known, he still feels guilty: for not helping him, for actively trying to forget him, for his tacit rejection.

He doesn’t  _ want  _ to die. But he will, if that’s the penance that the powers that be exact for his betrayal of the soulbond. He will.

The Soldier drops the gun—doesn’t just drop it, but clicks the safety on and tosses it aside. “Take me in,” he says.

Clint nods. “Stay there.” He taps the comm to activate it again and says, “I need someone to come get us so we can blow this shit up.”

There’s silence for a moment. Then Tony says, “On my way.”

**

Fury and Hill handle SHIELD—Nat, apparently, dumped all of SHIELD’s files onto the web, so, good riddance.

But it makes things a  _ little  _ difficult for them, on the bringing Bucky in front.

Steve is adamant that they’re not turning Bucky over to the government. Clint agrees—less vehemently, but he does agree.

Sam and Tony ask what the fuck they’re going to do with him, then.

Nat, like Clint, just watches the Soldier. He sees something in her eyes, but he doesn’t ask. She’ll tell him if he needs to know.

They go around in circles for a while, all back to hiding out in Fury’s bunker slash safe house. Finally, Clint says, “I’ll take him to a safe house.”

Nat levels him with an icy glare; she hasn’t had a chance to give him hell for what he did past calling him a suicidal moron, and then a few curses in various languages to boot, when she checked over his injuries. Clint doesn’t give ground, though; he meets her eyes for a few seconds, and then pointedly turns away to the others.

“How off the grid are we talking?” Tony asks.

“Very,” Clint tells him. “Maybe you and JARVIS could find us, but probably not anyone else.”

Tony hums. “Let me set up surveillance systems around the property and check it’s secure?”

“No.” Tony opens his mouth to protest, and Clint points out, “You’re needed here, same as Steve. I’m a highly trained agent, and he’s…” Clint waves at Bucky and trails off, considering. “Well, he’s whatever he is. I think the two of us can handle ourselves.”

“And you want to be somewhere off the grid with  _ him?”  _ Sam asks. “Like, I know he’s Steve’s star-crossed love and your other soulmate, I get that, but… it’s hardly safe.”

Clint shrugs. “He had his chance to kill me. He didn’t.” He doesn’t look at Natasha, but he knows she’s listening and drawing the parallels he needs her to make. “I’m not asking permission.”

“I’m going with you,” Steve says.

“No,” they all say. Sam’s crossing his arms, as is Nat, and Tony just looks pissed. Clint’s not annoyed or angry; he’s just tired.

“Steve,” he says, soft. “You know what you need to do.”

Steve looks nothing short of gutted. “But—”

“Trust me with him.” Clint knows exactly how much he’s asking. He also knows that if Steve says no, he’ll understand, but it will break him.

Steve hesitates so long that Clint starts to feel where the inevitable cracks in his self-esteem are beginning to form, ready to shatter. But then he ducks his head. “Okay.” Steve isn’t happy about it, but he  _ is _ trusting Clint with the one person that matters the most to him.

It doesn’t make up for not  _ being  _ that person, for knowing his worth has been compared to Bucky’s and found wanting, but it does help.

Clint turns to Bucky then. Bucky—the Soldier—a person somewhere in between the two: both, and neither—is standing against by wall. He’s behind Steve, because Steve was the only person willing to put his back to him. He isn’t leaning against the wall; he just stands there, back ramrod straight, waiting.

It makes Clint anxious—the compliance, the need for orders. It touches on trauma he never dealt with, and, yeah, should’ve gone to therapy.

If he’s honest, the thought of being alone with the Winter Soldier slash Bucky Barnes for an indefinite amount of time makes him want to crawl out of his skin. But he understands debt, and guilt, and he’s starting to understand soulmates, and he knows: this is a thing he needs to do.

“You okay with that?” Clint asks. He looks right at the Soldier; the Soldier’s eyes don’t meet his, looking somewhere over his shoulder, but Clint makes the effort to catch his gaze anyway.

There’s a long moment of silence. The Winter Soldier clenches his jaw, a small tick of uncertainty. “Yes,” he offers at last.

“Okay,” Clint agrees. He looks back at the others. “Well then. Go team.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reminder I sometimes like to plop on fics like this one is that I'm writing from a very specific POV, and that means all the joys that come with a sometimes-unreliable narrator. I'm writing things as Clint's interpreting them--that does not always 1:1 reflect how they ARE. He makes assumptions about other people's thoughts/feelings/actions and acts accordingly; that does not mean I secretly agree or dislike people or...
> 
> Yeah, okay, so just like: I don't hate Steve and neither does Clint. -finger guns- It's just angsty for a bit here.

Clint checks over the farmhouse and nods to himself.

It is not the farmhouse he grew up in. It is miles away from that one, and as such it has no ties to Clint Barton or his life.

It is Clint’s last resort safe house, the one that no one knows about, the one that no one would have been able to  _ guess  _ about because everyone who knows anything about him knows that he never wanted to go back to Iowa. Even  _ Natasha  _ is surprised; a surprise she shows by raising one delicate eyebrow when Tony’s quinjet touches down in an overgrown field.

A little obvious, but they needed  _ some  _ way to get Clint and Bucky there, so Tony and Nat took them while Steve distracted the government by talking about HYDRA and trying  _ not  _ to talk about the Winter Soldier.

It’s dusk when they set down. The dead of night would have been its own kind of suspicious, and midday would have been too noticeable. Dusk is better than dawn; no one has to wonder why you were up early for a plane flight.

Tony and Nat leave them be. Nat gives Clint one quick kiss and lets him go—her own unique way of telling him not to die. He opens his mouth to protest that  _ hey, he’s got a soulmate now,  _ when he remembers the clusterfuck of whatever his relationship with Steve is right now. Instead, he says, “Be smart, Tash,” and flees before she can come after him for what she probably takes as a veiled insult.

The Soldier follows Clint everywhere he goes, saying nothing. Clint glances over at him when he’s in Clint’s line of sight, and he looks around at everything with a wary, assessing gaze. “Do you want to know about the security I’ve installed?” Clint asks.

The Soldier tenses. “I do not understand.”

Clint sighs, but he also nods. “If it will make you feel safer to know how we’re protected, I’ll show you the security systems.”

“I don’t…” The Soldier hesitates. “Feel?”

Clint nods again. “Okay,” he says. “If I tell you that we’re secure, will you be able to sleep?”

The Soldier watches him, assessing. “You want me to sleep?”

Okay. It’s official. This is going to kill Clint. “Yes,” he answers. “Yes, you can sleep whenever you’re tired.” He hesitates, and then says, “I want that. For you to sleep when you’re tired.”

“Okay,” the Soldier agrees. “Then I will sleep.”

It’s like talking in circles. Clint’s head hurts. When was the last time he slept? “Let me show you to a bedroom,” he says wearily. He resists offering Barnes—maybe that’s how he can think of him? Not Bucky, or the Soldier, but Barnes—a choice of rooms, because Clint can acknowledge that Barnes doesn’t need any more confusion or stress right now.

Barnes is easily settled. Clint points him to a room, points him to the bathroom, tells him to please take care of his needs, and hopes that’s enough. He moves to the master bedroom, the only one in the house with a personality. It’s painted purple, because he decided that if a situation ever got so dire that he was stuck  _ here,  _ the last place he wanted to be, then he might as well have a nice room to be stuck in.

He barely notices the color now. He just collapses on the bed and falls asleep.

**

He doesn’t dream. He wakes up, and the first thought he has is how relieved his is to have  _ not  _ dreamed.

Well, he thinks there was something vague about a dog, so maybe an actual dream, but none of that weird soulmate shit.

He wonders idly if people with more than one soulmate dream more frequently. He doesn’t care enough to search out an answer.

His ears ache from having his hearing aids in for so long, and then on top of that sleeping with them in. He sighs and contemplates taking them out. He  _ should.  _ But… not yet, maybe.

With little else to do except tackle the day, the first of what Clint anticipates will be inumerable long days, he… does that. He climbs out of bed and contemplates a shower. He sorely needs one, but decides against it, because, again, hearing aids. Instead, he changes into fresh clothes—glad he had a stock of clothes here, because he hadn’t been able to pack anything from his and Steve’s apartment in DC—and pads down the stairs and through the main room.

The first thing he does in the kitchen is make coffee. The coffee pot is small and a little (a lot) cheap, but it’ll do for now. He desperately hopes Barnes doesn’t drink much coffee, otherwise they’ll be brewing a lot of pots. When Clint bought this tiny coffee pot, he didn’t anticipate needing to share.

He sips his coffee and tries to listen for noises. He can’t help but try, even though he knows from experience with Nat that Barnes will be capable of moving soundlessly. Besides, his hearing aids, while upgraded by Tony Stark, still can only pick up so much.

He doesn’t hear anything, though. Eventually, he reaches the point where he can no longer ignore the dull throbbing heat in his ears, and he doesn’t want to make it so that he can’t wear his aids for  _ days,  _ rather than just a few hours, so he sighs. He rinses his coffee mug in the sink and goes back upstairs, stopping outside of the door to the room he gave to Barnes.

He knocks and waits, kind of suspecting Barnes won’t answer—won’t even be there, will have taken off as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Clint wouldn’t blame him, honestly. Steve, though, would absolutely blame Clint, and—

His train of thought is cup off as the door opens. Barnes is there, hair messy—but from sleep or just generally all the shit they’ve been through? No way to tell—but eyes alert. He says nothing.

“Uh,” Clint says, trying to remember words. He has a sneaking suspicion that’s derailing him, though, and he asks, “Were you waiting?” He doesn’t add the  _ for orders,  _ but he can tell it is understood anyway.

“Yes,” Barnes agrees.

Shit. “Okay,” Clint says. “That’s…” He’s not gonna say good, because he doesn’t want to reinforce this mentality, but he doesn’t want to say  _ bad  _ and make the guy feel like he fucked up. “Fine,” he eventually says, voice a bit weak on the word.

Where to go from here? This is… exactly what he signed up for, and yet also so much more than he expected.

“You don’t need to wait for permission to leave your room,” Clint says. “You can go anywhere in the house. You can even go outside, just tell me first?” It comes out a question.

“Okay,” Barnes agrees.

“Are you hungry?” Clint asks.

Barnes seems to consider. “I do not require sustenance at this time.”

“Okay,” Clint agrees. “But are you hungry? Around here, we eat when we’re hungry.”

Barnes tilts his head. “I…” He hesitates. “Yes.”

“Alright, awesome,” Clint says. “Me too. I can make breakfast.” He starts down the stairs, but then stops when he notices that Barnes is just standing in his doorway still. “Do you want to come sit in the kitchen with me?” Clint offers. “Or you could shower?”

“I will shower,” Barnes says after a moment.

“Okay,” Clint agrees with a shrug. “There should be clothes in my room, they’ll sort of fit you. You can wear anything. And towels are in the bathroom.” With that, he finishes making his way down the stairs.

He takes out his hearing aids while he cooks, because he really needs to, and also because it will stop him from trying to listen for the noise of the shower. He has the itchy desire to keep tabs on Barnes, but that’s unfair to a man who has had too much of his life controlled too closely.

_ That  _ sends Clint down a rabbit hole of thoughts, some about himself, some about Barnes. He’s a little unsteady and a lot in a dark mood by the time Barnes comes back downstairs.

Clint silently thanks whoever designed the house for the layout, because it means that he’s able to see Barnes descend the stairs from where he’s standing at the stove. “I don’t have my hearing aids in,” Clint calls out. “So I can’t hear you if you talk.”

Barnes freezes on the last step for a moment. But then the moment passes, and Barnes makes his way over to the table in the big, open kitchen.

Clint pretends it doesn’t bother him to have Barnes at his back when he can’t hear. He’s going to have to get used to it, anyway.

He finishes breakfast—so many eggs, a lot of toast, and some bacon—and plates everything. “Can you help me take some of this over to the table?” Clint asks.

Barnes hesitates, but then springs into motion. He and Clint each take half, and then they’re settling in across from each other. Clint has coffee from a fresh pot in front of him, and he sets some out for Barnes in an attempt at politeness.

Barnes looks at it, head tilted. Then he signs,  _ I’ve never had coffee. _

Clint blinks. “You know ASL?”

Barnes considers that. Nods.

“Huh,” Clint says. “Okay. If you don’t like the coffee, let me know, and I’ll get you something else.”

A look passes across Barnes’ face then, something like anxiety. It’s there and gone in a flash, but Clint thinks Barnes must be so far out of his depth if he’s letting his emotions bleed into expressions at all.

“Eat as much as you want,” Clint tells him. “I hate leftovers.”

He watches Barnes process that, and then pretends not to notice as the man slowly reaches out, spooning eggs onto his plate. Clint, for his part, snags some bacon and toast, then eggs when Barnes is done with them. He makes himself a little sandwich and digs in.

Barnes eats a lot less than Clint knows he should. But Clint’s not here to force feed people, so he just says, “Are you sure? Eggs are never as good cold.”

Barnes nods once, a quick jerk of his head.

“Okay,” Clint agrees. “I’ll put them in the fridge, and you can have more if you get hungry again.”  _ When,  _ he thinks, and wonders if Barnes will trust Clint enough to take him up on the explicit offer.

Probably not.

Clint’s got his work cut out for him.

After breakfast, Clint cleans the dishes and then goes to play angry birds on the untraceable phone Tony gave him. He lays on the couch, watches Barnes sit at the table and not move, and doesn’t comment.

When his ears are less stuffy after breathing for a few hours, Clint puts his hearing aids back in. “You like television?” he asks Barnes.

Barnes stops pretending not to watch Clint and looks directly at him instead. “I… don’t know.”

“Want to find out?”

Barnes looks like he very much does not want to find out, but he nods. Clint shrugs. “Cool, c’mere.” He shoves himself up so that he’s sitting on the couch. It’s a three person one, so he figures if he takes one end, Barnes can take the other, and they’ll still be respecting each other’s personal space.

While Barnes comes over and takes a seat, Clint tries to figure out what he can put on that won’t fuck with Barnes in some way.

He can’t really think of anything. So he goes with what he wants and asks, “Dog Cops okay?”

“What… is it?”

“A show about these dogs who are cops,” Clint tells him. “It’s great. You’ll love Sergeant Whiskers.”

Barnes says nothing. Clint keeps looking at him. Barnes eventually seems to realize Clint still wants an answer to his first question. “Sure.”

Appeased, Clint snags the remote and turns it on. “Hulu has every season,” Clint tells him. “I’ve seen them all, so we can start with the first episode.”

Clint watches Barnes out of the corner of his eyes for the first few minutes. Barnes remains stiff in his seat, but his eyes track the movement on the television. Clint relaxes into watching the episode, and before he knows it, twenty minutes has passed and it’s over.

“What did you think?” Clint asks.

Barnes shrugs. Clint tries to decide if this is a good thing—he’s not answering Clint’s questions like he thinks they’re secretly orders, at least—or a bad one—he  _ is  _ still avoiding having opinions or preferences or giving input on anything.

“Want to watch the next one?” Clint asks, deciding to let it go.

Barnes nods.

Clint queues up the next episode.

**

It’s not easy. It gets easier, though.

Barnes is still shy about being in a room that Clint isn’t in, except for when they go to their own separate rooms at night to sleep. Hell, maybe even then, but Clint draws a line there—he’s okay with Barnes being in his space, mostly, but he’s not sleeping in the same room as the guy. No way.

Barnes only eats at meal times, but when Clint never takes the food away before he’s done or chastises him for how much he’s eaten, he starts to slowly eat more and more.

They’re small victories, but Clint will take them.

**

Steve tries to call.

Clint lets all the calls go to voicemail.

Steve never leaves a message.

**

Clint avoids the news. But he does, eventually, need to go into town for groceries.

Luckily, he only saved the world that once, and no one really kept tabs on him. He’s kinda noticeable as Captain America’s soulmate, but they’ve kept it relatively quiet. He doesn’t think anyone would expect to see him in a small town in the Midwest, especially when Steve is off in DC or wherever handling the shitshow that the fall of SHIELD left behind.

“I have to go into town,” Clint tells Bucky over breakfast. Bucky tenses, but doesn’t say anything. He just shovels eggs into his mouth with precise, controlled motions. “You should stay here.”

Barnes drops his fork. He stares down at his plate for a moment, and then he shoves abruptly away from the table and stalks out of the room. Clint turns to watch Barnes bolt up the stairs and, if the slam is anything to go by, shut himself in his room.

“That could’ve gone better,” Clint mumbles to himself. He’s not too put out, though, because this is the first real expression of  _ life  _ Barnes has shown.

Clint finishes breakfast and leaves the rest out on the table in case Barnes gets hungry and wants to eat it. “I’m going now,” he calls out. He adds, “Please still be here when I get back,” but says it quietly, in an undertone he sort of hopes Barnes can’t hear.

The drive to town takes over an hour, and stocking up takes a long time, too. He evades the nosy questions of the grocer and hopes the man assumes Clint’s just got a wife and kids to keep fed when he buys a  _ lot. _

He also buys a lot of different things, so that Barnes can try them and find things he likes. Clint isn’t hopeful that Barnes will start sharing his preferences any time soon, but  _ making  _ them, even silently, has to be worth something, right?

Clint worries the whole way back to the house. If Barnes isn’t there, Clint… isn’t sure what he’ll do. He’s afraid of Steve’s response, yes, but he’s also just… afraid.

Barnes’ presence isn’t much, given his habit of actively trying to take up as little space as possible and go unnoticed, but having him around means Clint isn’t alone.

Clint… doesn’t want to be alone.

He has a lightbulb moment and wonders if this is how Barnes feels—unmoored, tethered only by Clint’s presence—and thinks,  _ yeah,  _ that’s probably why he reacted so strongly.

Clint knows he did the right thing asking--telling-- _ suggesting  _ that Barnes stay behind, but he also sympathizes with the fear of being alone.

When he drives up, though, Barnes is standing in the doorway. He signs at Clint,  _ I can help carry things,  _ and Clint nods through the windshield.

Barnes doesn’t say anything as they carry the bags inside. Clint notices that the kitchen is clean, the dishes put away, and he feels something kind of like pride warm him from the inside.

It’s just. Barnes did that—chose to do a thing all on his own, without a gentle suggestion from Clint.

“Thanks for cleaning up,” Clint tells him, because he wants Barnes to know that he noticed, and that doing things unprompted is not only allowed, but welcomed.

Barnes only shrugs in response, but Clint thinks his eyes look a little brighter.

**

Steve stops calling.

**

A few days later, at breakfast, Barnes asks his first unprompted question. “Why don’t you answer the phone?”

Clint blinks. “I do,” he says, because it’s true enough. He answers when Tony calls, and about half the time when Nat calls, just not…

“When  _ he  _ calls,” Barnes says, putting emphasis on ‘he.’

Clint doesn’t want to talk about it. He opens his mouth to say that—probably not so nicely, because being asked his makes him feel like he’s been stabbed in the chest, and the fact that it’s Barnes asking feels like he’s twisting the knife that much deeper.

But… it’s not  _ actually  _ Barnes’ fault. None of it is. And Clint doesn’t want Barnes to take away from this exchange that he shouldn’t be allowed to ask questions.

“How do you know that?” Clint asks. “That I don’t answer when Steve calls.”

“I dreamed,” Barnes says. “Only, not a dream. I was you. You didn’t answer.”

Clint nods slowly. That means Steve also dreamed—maybe  _ that’s  _ why he stopped calling.

_ Good,  _ says a petty, vicious voice inside of Clint. The rest of him is just sad.

“Do you remember the way I felt?” Barnes nods slowly. “So, that’s how I feel when I think about Steve,” he says. “That’s part of why I didn’t answer. I can explain it to you, and tell you the rest, but… then I’m going to ask you a question, too. Is that fair?”

Barnes doesn’t respond immediately, apparently contemplating. That’s good—he’s inching toward making decisions for himself. “Yes,” he agrees.

“Okay,” Clint says. “What feelings could you pick out?”

Barnes’ face scrunches up—it’s kind of adorable. Which,  _ no,  _ he’s not adorable, he’s scary, Clint’s brain is going to get him killed one of these days. “Bad. Hurt.”

“Okay, awesome,” Clint says, even though he feels very far from awesome. “Hurt’s definitely one of them.” He rubs at his chest over his heart, because yeah, it  _ hurts.  _ “There’s also anger—that can feel kind of… hot? And…” He doesn’t want to say it, admit it out loud, because that’ll make it real.

Barnes waits patiently.

“Loss,” Clint finally says. “When I think of Steve, I think of how we used to be, and we’re not like that anymore. And it makes me feel sad, because I want it back.”

Barnes slowly nods. Then, “Can… can I ask another question?” Clint nods. “Why aren’t you like you were?”

Clint sucks in a breath through his teeth. “You know the dreams? Do you know what they mean?”

Barnes nods slowly. “We’re connected.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “Soulmates, that’s what they call it. Sometimes people fall in love with their soulmates. I fell in love with Steve, and he fell in love with me. But he knew you before all of this happened, and he loved you then, and he loved you first. And when we found out you were alive, he… wanted you more,” Clint says.

Barnes frowns. “But I’m not that person,” he says.

“Not anymore,” Clint agrees. “But also… you used to be? And Steve will always love you because of who you used to be.”

“But you’re you now,” Barnes argues.

Clint sighs. “Look, it doesn’t matter, okay? I’m not mad at  _ you.  _ My problems with Steve end with Steve.”

Barnes looks deeply dissatisfied, but he nods slowly. “What’s your question?”

Clint blinks; he’d forgotten. “Oh. Why didn’t you shoot me?”

Barnes tilts his head, studying Clint. “I dreamed before. I was  _ him— _ Steve. I remembered how he felt when he looked at you, and when I looked at you, I remembered how to feel for a moment. I didn’t want to stop.”

That answers Clint’s curiosity, at least. His throat feels weirdly tight, but he swallows around it and says, “Is that why you’re still here?”

Barnes considers. “Yes,” he agrees after a few moments. “I… like you.”

It’s the first time he’s explicitly stated a preference for anything. Clint’s heart  _ hurts,  _ not unlike how it feels when he thinks of Steve. “Thanks, Barnes,” he says. “I like you too.”

The thing is: he does. He does like Barnes. He’s always admired strength, and the way this man is piecing himself together out of fragments and scraps of a self is awe-inspiring. And the person he’s becoming is fun—a little snarky when he thinks no one’s looking, but also kind, curious. Someone worth knowing.

Ugh, feelings.

Clint shoves away his food, no longer hungry, and sips at his coffee, watching Barnes. He contemplates how Barnes is finally expressing preferences, and decides to just go for it, asking, “What do you want to be called?”

Barnes tenses. “I—” He shuts his mouth again with a snap.

Clint waits, but Barnes doesn’t look inclined to try again. “Is Barnes okay?” Clint asks. “I can explain why I call you that, if you want.”

Barnes hesitates and then nods.

“Okay,” Clint says easily. “Your birth name is James Buchanan Barnes. Before all this, you went by Bucky.”

“That’s what he called me,” Barnes says quietly.

Clint nods. “Because he knew you then. Do you want to be called Bucky?” Barnes shakes his head. “Okay. And I’m not gonna call you Soldier, because you’re a person and people deserve names.” Barnes’ jaw tightens, but after a moment, he nods again. “So I call you by your last name, Barnes, because we don’t know each other very well, and also it doesn’t have memories attached to it. It’s connected to who you were, but it doesn’t represent someone you aren’t.”

“That’s…” Barnes trails off. He swallows. “Yeah,” he says after a moment. “That works.”

“Awesome,” Clint says.

“Others call you Clint,” Barnes says.

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “Because that’s my name.”

“But… do I call you Clint? Or Barton? Or…”

“Either is fine,” Clint says. “You can feel free to call me Clint. Or you can call me Barton if you want. Whatever.”

Barnes mulls that over for a moment. Then he says, “Clint,” not a question, just like he’s weighing the word on his tongue. “Yeah,” he says softly. “I’ll call you Clint.”

“Cool.” Clint’s about had it with emotions for the day. He’s exhausted; he feels like he just ran ten miles under duress. “I’m gonna take a nap. Don’t wake me unless the world’s ending.”

Barnes nods, apparently taking that more seriously than Clint meant it, but—whatever. The world  _ does  _ try to end every few weeks these days, so it’s probably a good stipulation.

He collapses into bed and tugs his aids out, stuffing his head under a pillow to block out the light and the world.

He sleeps, and when he sleeps, he dreams as Barnes.

It’s unfair, really, to make him relive the conversation they just had when he’s trying to escape from it.

Clint is relieved, though, to feel emotions breaking through the ice that used to mask them. Mostly confusion, but other things as well. There’s something like trust, or loyalty, when Barnes looks at him and Clint… doesn’t know he’s earned that. It feels wrong, somehow, and to add another layer of guilt, it feels like something he’s stolen from Steve somehow.

Which, fuck that. Barnes is his soulmate too, so Steve can fuck off.

There’s also a precious indignation during the part of the conversation about Clint’s relationship with Steve, and that warms Clint somewhat. At least he’s not the only one annoyed.

When he wakes up, he feels… better. Not rested, but almost like he’s achieved some kind of catharsis.

He knows, now that he’s seen inside of Barnes head—and oh boy does he wince at that phrasing—that he’s doing okay. Clint’s not irrevocably fucking up. Barnes is recovering.

Everything might actually be okay. One day.

Now they just have to keep going and  _ get there.  _

**

They’re watching their post breakfast Dog Cops binge when something unexpected happens: Barnes laughs.

Clint glances over at him, noting the way Barnes tenses as he realizes what he’s done. He looks confused, too. But Clint looks back to the TV and doesn’t comment, and Barnes slowly relaxes again.

He laughs three more times before the day is over—each one hesitant like he’s testing the waters, rediscovering joy.

He is, Clint notes somewhat absently, actually pretty beautiful when he smiles.

**

One night, Clint wakes to the feeling that he’s being watched.

It’s unsettling. He doesn’t like it.

He opens his eyes and looks to the window first, then the door.

Barnes is hovering in the doorway. He’s tense, hunched in on himself, a little wild-eyed. He has no weapons, though, and he doesn’t look homicidal.

Clint heaves an internal shrug-sigh combo and slips in his hearing aids. “What’s up?”

Barnes’ jaw is clenched too tight for him to speak. He holds up his hands as if to sign, then hesitates. Slowly, he spells out n-i-g-h-t-m-a-r-e.

“Sucks,” Clint comments. “How can I help?”

Barnes shrugs. Fair, but also entirely unhelpful.

“We can get up and watch TV?” Barnes shakes his head. “You could come over here and sleep with me?” Clint’s pretty much just throwing the options out there at this point—he doesn’t expect that one to fly.

But Barnes hesitates and then nods.  _ Please,  _ he signs, and that kind of seals the deal. Clint is, after all, the one who offered.

“C’mere then,” Clint says, shoving himself to the side so there’s space in the large bed for Barnes to lay without needing to touch Clint.

Barnes slowly approaches the bed, as if it’s something dangerous. Clint waits him out.

Barnes lifts one edge of the blanket and looks to Clint for—what? Permission? Reassurance? Whatever he’s looking for, he must get it, because he slides gracefully into the bed beside Clint.

He’s lying on his side, on the metal arm—that  _ cannot  _ be comfortable—looking at Clint.

“Wake me if you need me,” Clint tells him.

He goes to take his hearing aids out, but Barnes whispers, “Wait.” He waits. “Can I…?”

“You gotta ask before I can answer,” Clint points out.

Barnes frowns at him. “Can I hold your hand?”

Clint considers. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees. He slips his hearing aids out and rolls over partway to drop them on the side table before turning back to Barnes. He offers his hand, palm up, in the space between them. Barnes takes it, holding it gently, fingers slipping between Clint’s own.

Clint closes his eyes and tries to sleep. He doesn’t, but that’s less because of the assassin in his bed and more because of the intimacy he’s unprepared for.

Because: Barnes is his soulmate. But what does that  _ mean?  _ Steve is his soulmate too, for whatever that’s worth.

Dawn breaks and Clint slips out of bed, unable to stay a moment longer.

It’s fine, he decides, as he prepares his coffee. Whatever happens, it’ll all be fine.

He wishes he could believe himself even a little.

**

Barnes is in the kitchen, cleaning up breakfast—they have settled into a routine now where Clint cooks, and Barnes cleans (at his own insistence)—when Nat calls. Clint gestures at the phone and points in the vague direction of outside; Barnes nods and appears unbothered.

Clint doesn’t know if going outside actually makes it so that Barnes can’t hear the conversation, but he likes the illusion of privacy.

“What’s up?”

Nat fills him in on the slow progress they’re making with clearing all of their names, ferreting out HYDRA with other agencies, and—most importantly—presenting Barnes’ case.

“He’s going to need to come in eventually,” Nat tells Clint carefully. “So he can be put on trial and cleared.”

Clint glances through the window at Barnes. Protectiveness surges in his chest. “Not until you’re sure he’s safe,” Clint tells her. “And not until he’s ready.”

“You should talk to Steve,” she says next.

Clint barks out a laugh. “Not until  _ I’m  _ ready.”

“He’s not good at being patient,” she warns.

“That’s not my problem.”

She hums, apparently unswayed by the firmness in his voice. But then, he knows that Nat often doesn’t subscribe to notions of fairness, instead relying on practicality.

Later, he’ll see this for the warning it was. In the moment, however, he turns the conversation to more innocuous topics, such as taking his life into his own hands in order to tease her about Sam. She doesn’t say much, but from what she does say, he knows she’s taken with him.

When he heads back into the house half an hour later, chilled from the cool fall morning and unable to feel the tips of his fingers, Barnes is sitting at the table, sipping a fresh cup of coffee. They’ve discovered that he likes it with cream and sugar, sweet and mellow flavored.

“Thanks,” Barnes says.

Clint doesn’t bother asking for what. He wants to say “of course,” to offer some kind of platitude about how it’s the decent thing to do. That’s what Steve would do. But Clint knows how few truly decent people there are in the world, and he doesn’t know if he even ranks among them. Instead, he says, “You’re welcome,” and hopes that’s enough.

**

They move on from Dog Cops to The Great British Bake-Off. Bucky’s  _ enamored. _

“I want to make biscuits,” he says.

“They’re called cookies in the US,” Clint tells him.

Bucky narrows his eyes. “I want to make biscuits,” he repeats.

Clint rolls his eyes. “Okay,” he agrees. “I think I have some chocolate chips and some flour. Let’s make biscuits.”

The end result is cookies that are surprisingly delicious; both of them covered in flour; an egg smashed over Clint’s head and batter in Barnes’ hair from where Clint threw a handful at him.

It is, quite possibly, the most fun Clint’s had in months. It is  _ definitely  _ the happiest he’s ever seen Barnes.

He teaches Barnes to dip cookies in coffee the way less enlightened people dip them in milk, and pretends not to notice the fond eye roll Barnes gives him as Clint extolls his own genius in this.

**

Baking became a  _ thing.  _ Barnes shyly asked to borrow Clint’s phone to look up recipes.

Clint didn’t hesitate. He knew the damage Barnes could do with a phone… and he knew that Barnes could have easily snagged it when Clint was asleep or distracted and done that damage a thousand times over by now. “Sure,” he agreed, handing it over.

The next time he went into town, he got an old second-hand laptop for them to share.

Barnes’ eyes widened when he saw it. “Isn’t that dangerous?” he asked.

Clint took a moment to be proud of the contraction, and the fact that Barnes’ speech patterns were becoming more human than the carefully blank intonations of the Winter Soldier. “Yeah,” Clint agreed with a shrug. “But I figure no one’s gonna blink twice when they see a house in the Midwest googling baking recipes. They’ll just think someone’s grandma moved in.”

Barnes ignored the ribbing. “Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

Barnes approached the laptop like an animal about to spook. But when he opened it and Clint didn’t say a word, he logged in and hooked it up to the internet.

Barnes was quickly lost to the depth of Google and mommy bloggers and their family recipes.

Clint left him to it.

On his  _ next  _ shopping trip he had a list a mile long of baking supplies to pick up.

**

Clint tucked the case with his bow in the corner of his room and hasn’t touched it since they got to the farmhouse. Barnes never asks, but despite the silence surrounding the topic, as they days go on it’s never far from Clint’s mind.

One morning, he bites the bullet and says, “I’m going to go shoot for a bit.”

Barnes studies him for a moment. “Can I watch?”

Clint considers him in turn. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees. “Meet me outside.”

It’s warm but not overly hot yet when he meets Barnes outside; it’s past dawn but the sun isn’t yet high in the sky.

The world feels less off-kilter when Clint has his bow in his hand. He’s got less than half a quiver of arrows; he doesn’t want to push too hard after so long without shooting. After he lines up his first shot, though, he regrets that decision; he could use more of this calmness, this clarity.

By the second shot, he’s no longer aware of Barnes’ eyes on him: the world has narrowed down to the tip of his arrows and his target.

He shoots mostly at one of the trees in the yard, picking small circles on the bark or specific leaves to hit.

He never misses.

When Clint runs out of arrows, he allows the world to rush back in. Barnes’ eyes are still on him, dark and intent. It makes something swoop in Clint’s stomach.

“You should set up some targets,” Barnes says.

“Yeah, okay,” Clint agrees after a moment of contemplation. “You gonna help?”

Barnes shrugs. “Sure.”

Clint smiles, feels something in his chest unlock. “Okay.”

He gathers his arrows and shoves them back in his quiver. He leaves his bow by the door instead of up in his room.

“Should you be leaving a weapon near me?” Barnes asks as he follows Clint into the kitchen. Clint sets about making more coffee because he earned it, emotionally, picking up his bow again and facing the emotions that went with it.

Clint rolls his eyes. “You still have your arm, don’t you?”

Barnes tenses for a moment before nodding. “I guess,” he agrees.

“I’m not concerned,” Clint tells him. “Maybe at first, but not anymore, not for a long while.”

Barnes looks a little lost at that. “Okay,” he says, slowly, testing the word.

He pours some coffee for himself and goes to sit on the couch, where he eyes the bow by the door. Clint sits in his own spot and eyes Barnes just as blatantly.

“Will you teach me to shoot it, then?” Barnes asks.

“Huh.” Clint tilts his head while he thinks about it. “Why?”

Barnes is quiet for a while. His eyes flicker a bit, not like he’s looking around so much as like he’s thinking really hard. “It’s one weapon I don’t know how to use,” he says eventually. He shifts his gaze from the bow to Clint. “And it’s important to you.”

Both of those statements make Clint feel… something. Unmoored.

He thinks everyone—except maybe Steve—would be super pissed off if he taught Barnes how to use another deadly weapon.

But then, fuck absolutely everyone other than the man in front of him. “Yeah, sure. Always glad to introduce new people to the art.”

Barnes’ smile dawns slowly but brightens to improbable degrees, not unlike one of Steve’s sunrise smiles. He doesn’t thank Clint, but he doesn’t question the wisdom of the decision, either, so: progress.

Plus, the smile is enough.

“Okay,” he agrees after a moment, still holding Barnes’ gaze. “Yeah, I’ll teach you. Of course.”

**

Clint sets up some targets and sets about teaching Barnes to shoot.

Barnes takes to shooting the bow about as well as Clint expected—which is to say,  _ very  _ well.

Barnes does not seem to agree. “It’s an inch off,” he grouses.

“You just started half an hour ago,” Clint points out. “An inch off is incredible.”

“You’re never even a millimeter off.”

“And I’ve been shooting how long?”

Barnes looses the arrow he’s been aiming and turns to look at Clint even before the arrow hits the target. It’s even closer to the center than his last arrow. “How long have you been shooting?”

Clint considers. “I dunno. Since I was a kid. Maybe since I was nine or ten?”

“Shit,” Barnes says. “That young?”

Clint shrugs, uncomfortable. “I mean, it’s not like I was shooting at people that young,” because, no, that had been when he was sixteen or seventeen, which he has a suspicion isn’t much better, “just targets and stuff.”

Barnes nods once. “Did you like it? When you started?”

Clint thinks back and can’t help the grin that blossoms on his face. “I’ve always liked it.”

“Why did you stop?”

Clint eyes Barnes. “How much of my history do you know?”

Barnes scowls. “Not enough.”

That makes Clint smile a little, a bit sad. “Well, okay, shooting first, then we can talk.”

Barnes narrows his eyes, like he thinks Clint’s trying to distract him.

“I promise,” Clint says. He holds out his pinky. Barnes eyes it warily.

“What do I do with that?”

Clint laughs, delighted. “Hold out your hand.” Barnes does as asked. Clint hooks his pinky around Barnes’ and says, “There. Pinky promise.”

“What is the point?” Barnes asks, staring down at their linked fingers.

“It’s a thing people do to signal that they’re serious. If you break the promise, you’re supposed to cut off your pinky.”

Barnes looks somewhat alarmed. “I don’t want you to cut off your finger,” he says slowly.

Clint smiles. “Well, yeah, no one really ever follows through,” he admits. “It’s more just to signal seriousness in a silly way.”

“Okay then.” Barnes clearly thinks Clint, and maybe humanity more generally, has a few screws loose.

He’s probably right.

They finish shooting and head back into the house. Barnes makes a beeline for the coffee pot before Clint has even finished placing his bow back in its new spot. “You’re the best,” Clint tells him, leaning on the counter to wait for the coffee to brew.

Barnes gives him a little sideways smile. “Bet you say that to everyone who makes you coffee.”

“Well, yeah,” Clint admits. He nudges Bucky’s shoulder gently with his own. “You’re pretty high up there on my favorites list in general, though.”

There’s a flush to Barnes’ cheeks—but it’s easy to explain away. They’ve been outside, and it’s not exactly chilly. “You too.”

And, well, if there’s a flush to Clint’s cheeks, it’s definitely just the weather.

But then Clint thinks of the conversation that’s looming and all warmth vanishes anyway. He fidgets, but Barnes doesn’t push. He simply leaves Clint to brood.

Clint’s brooding so deeply that he doesn’t even notice the coffee’s done until Barnes is pushing a mug into his hands. “We need more mugs,” Barnes says.

Clint blinks, startled out of his dark thoughts. “We have like ten.”

“Yeah, five each? With the way we drink coffee? Not enough.”

Clint hums. “Okay. I’ll get more.”

He takes his coffee to the couch and curls up in his spot, allowing himself the vulnerability of knees pulled up to his chest. Barnes joins him, and he sits a little closer than he might otherwise.

Clint has the impulse to reach out and touch the other man—to ground himself with physical contact—but he resists it, contenting himself with the proximity instead.

“You know about the Battle of New York?” Clint asks, and Barnes nods once.

“Yeah,” Barnes agrees after a moment, when Clint doesn’t say anything. “You fought with the Avengers.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “And that was the last time I used my bow for… fuck, until you.” Clint’s mostly staring at his knees, but he notices the way the tension in the room notches up. “I was never going to kill you,” Clint tells him. “I just… I had to give my all to trying to save you.”

“For Steve.”

Clint huffs a soft laugh. “If I was a better person, maybe,” he says. “But, no. I felt like I’d failed you. I spent years convincing myself that the dreams meant nothing, that no one like you could exist. I should have tried to find you sooner.”

Barnes reaches out; Clint tracks the movement from the corner of his eye. The tension in the room crests and breaks as Barnes’ hand curls gently around Clint’s bicep. “I would’ve killed you.” He says it matter-of-factly; there’s nothing gentle about the statement. But it  _ feels  _ gentle anyway.

Clint doesn’t know how to handle this sort of kindness. “Wouldn’t that have been better than abandoning you?”

“No.” Barnes’ tone leaves no room for argument. His fingers squeeze around Clint’s arm, just a faint increase in pressure. “You were there exactly when I needed you to be.”

Something in Clint breaks at that. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until tears drop from his chin onto his shirt. “Fuck,” he curses. “Shit.”

Barnes doesn’t move closer, but he doesn’t move away. He just stays where he is, holding onto Clint, grounding him with his steady presence. When Clint’s tears trail off, a few careful, deep breaths later, Barnes asks, “Okay?”

Clint nods, a jerky motion, and takes a couple more even breaths before he says. “Yeah.”

They haven’t even got to the awful part of the conversation yet. This sucks so much.

“I was brainwashed,” Clint admits. “Before New York.” Barnes’ hand tightens around Clint’s arm, a bruising pressure now, but Clint doesn’t try to make him let up. It feels good—like a reminder that he’s human, that he’s here.

That’s probably fucked up, but whatever.

“It was, like, magic and shit,” Clint continues. “Whatever. Nat hit me in the head really hard and that broke the connection somehow. I don’t pretend to understand. But… I killed a lot of people. People I worked with. Friends. So I fought against the aliens, and then… I was done. I didn’t want to fight anymore.”

“Until me,” Barnes says quietly.

“Until I had a good enough reason,” Clint corrects.

“Why shoot again now?”

“Because it felt like being cut off from a part of myself,” Clint says. “Like there was always something missing. And then I had my bow back, and I was more whole than I had been in almost two years.”

Barnes nods slowly. “Okay.” 

Clint scrubs a hand over his face, wiping away sticky tears. “I need chocolate chip cookies,” he decides.

“Those are so boring, though,” Barnes retorts, a half-hearted protest. Like he’s not already moving to the kitchen, snagging Clint’s empty mug as he passes by. 

“So? I deserve them.”

Barnes rolls his eyes, sending a thrill of  _ something  _ through Clint. Clint ignores it; he’s too tired for feelings after the emotional rollercoaster of the day. “Alright,” he acquiesces. “Come help me make them.”

**

Clint has nightmares that night—of course he does.

He doesn’t wake himself up screaming though. Well, he wakes up screaming, but it isn’t the screaming that wakes him. Instead, it’s a hand on his shoulder shaking him awake.

He gasps and shoves himself upright, pushing himself away from whatever, whoever, it is.

But then his vision adjusts to the darkness as the panic recedes, and it’s just Barnes, metal arm glinting in the light. Clint wilts.

_ Sorry,  _ Clint signs after a moment.

_ It’s fine.  _ Barnes hesitates, but Clint doesn’t have the energy to do more than wait and see if he’ll say whatever is on his mind.  _ I could stay. _

Clint thinks about that. He thinks about what his night will look like if he tells Barnes to go: he’ll have to put his aids in, and his ears will hurt in the morning from sleeping on them, and he probably won’t even  _ sleep,  _ will just stare at the wall and twitch at noises both real and imagined.

But if Barnes stays with him, well. There’s probably no place safer than with the Winter Soldier, former or no, at his back.

And, shit, when did he get  _ that  _ comfortable around Barnes, that his presence registers as increased safety rather than decreased?

He’s too exhausted and shaken to think about it. Instead, he nods and lifts up the blanket.

Barnes doesn’t hesitate, just slips in beside him. They’ve become possibly too practiced at sleeping in the same space, even if it’s usually not for Clint’s sake. But tonight he needs more, closer. He asks, “Can I?” as he reaches out to throw an arm across Barnes side, stopping when they are still a few inches of space left between them.

Barnes nods. Clint drops his arm and melts into the contact.

Barnes moves to wrap an arm around Clint in return, hesitating in the same fashion until Clint nods.

His eyes drift shut as Barnes’ arm settles along his. Clint knows from experience Barnes will have to shift sooner than later, because lying on the metal arm for too long is uncomfortable. He hopes that Barnes chooses to shift closer rather than further away, but then he shoves that hope away and doesn’t allow himself to think about it.

He feels Barnes’ thumb brush back and forth against his t-shirt-covered skin and falls asleep with a tired smile tugging at his lips.

**

When Clint wakes up the next morning, Barnes is still there. He’s lying on his stomach rather than his back, arm still tucked around Clint, weight against him heavy and warm.

Clint contemplates his options. Then, with a mental shrug, he snuggles closer into Barnes’ warmth.

Barnes’ eyes peek open to watch him as he does. “Okay?” Clint asks.

Barnes blinks and then closes his eyes once more.

Okay then.

Clint drifts back to sleep, content.

**

The next morning, Barnes looks up from his bowl of cereal and says, “You can call me James.”

Clint pauses, his own spoon halfway to his mouth. He lowers it back to the bowl. “Do you want me to call you James?”

Barnes shrugs. “It’s familiar,” he says.

“Like, it feels familiar?”

Barnes’ eyes narrow slightly. He doesn’t look angry, though, just slightly annoyed. “No. Like, I call you by your first name. Because we’re familiar.”

“I don’t mind calling you Barnes,” Clint volunteers. “It’s just a name.”

“Yeah,” Barnes agrees. “But you can call me James.”

They’re talking in circles again; Clint is a little disgruntled to find it’s not even annoying anymore. This, too, is familiar. “So you want me to call you James.”

Barnes—James—smiles, a small, pleased expression. “Yes,” he agrees.

“Okay.” Clint waits for a moment, but Barnes—fuck, James—says nothing else. With a small shrug, Clint picks up his spoon and keeps eating.

**

Clint pretty much has a heart attack when he returns home from a shopping trip a couple weeks later to see a strange car parked outside of the house.

He doesn’t bother to shut off the engine, much less take the keys out of the truck; he just bolts up the porch steps and bursts into the house.

What he finds shouldn’t surprise him as much as does.

James is in the kitchen, back to the counters, hands up.

Steve is in the living room, trying to talk to James from fifteen feet away from him.

James’ frantic gaze meets Clint’s as he burst through the door. “I didn’t hurt him,” he says. “I swear.”

Clint feels his heart clench. “Good,” he says. He turns his glare on Steve when he continues, “I wouldn’t blame you if you had.” His voice comes out cold.

Steve turns to look at Clint, expression wary and defiant all at once. “I couldn’t exactly warn you I was coming when you wouldn’t take my calls.”

“Bullshit,” Clint growls, furious. “You could have had Nat or Tony pass on the message. You showed up unannounced because you’re a self-absorbed asshole; you can maybe lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me.” Clint sucks in a sharp breath, and then he turns back to James. “I got the weird tiny cupcake tins you wanted. Come help me unload the car?”

James nods and slips past Steve, giving him a wide berth, and out the door.

“Clint—” Steve starts to say, and Clint cuts him off.

“I can’t do this right now,” he tells Steve. “Don’t talk to me until I’m ready, or I’ll say something we’ll both regret.”

James is quiet as he waits to Clint to turn off the car’s engine and pocket the keys. He doesn’t move immediately to help Clint with the bags. Instead, he reaches out, hesitates, and then gently curls the fingers of his right hand around Clint’s forearm. “Are you okay?” He pitches his voice quiet, but Clint figures they both know it’s a lost cause as far as keeping Steve from hearing goes.

Clint wants to lie and say yes. But… he  _ so  _ isn’t, and he doesn’t want to lie to  _ James.  _ “No,” he admits.

“Should I… what should I do?”

Clint sighs. He reaches over with his free hand and covers James’ hand with it. “Probably shouldn’t kill him,” Clint suggests, faux cheerful. He sobers again. “Other than that… I don’t know? Talk to him—but only if you want. Or you can ignore him if that’s what you want to do. I’ll back you.”

“I don’t know what to do,” James admits softly. “Sometimes I feel like I almost remember, but then it slips away again.”

“I’ll back you,” Clint repeats. “And if he corners you, come find me, and I’ll make him stop.” Clint thinks, wildly, that he’d take James in the night and run if he had to, dispose of the phone and go off the grid for real. But that’s excessive—Steve can sometimes be an asshole, but he’s not a danger. “He’s a good man,” Clint says, even though it kind of hurts him to admit it. “He cares about you, just like I do. You should give him a chance.”

James frowns. He doesn’t say anything, just stands there for a few moments before slipping away from Clint and going to the back seat of the truck to start unloading bags.

_ Fuck,  _ Clint thinks to himself.  _ What the fuck do I do now? _


	5. Chapter 5

Steve is still shifting anxiously on the balls of his feet when they get inside. He hasn’t moved from his position in the center of the main room, except to turn so that he’s facing the front door.

“Can I help?” he asks, seeing the two of them with their arms laden with bags.

“Sure,” Clint agrees, trying to be as civil as he can be right now. “Bring them in to the kitchen and leave them on the floor.”

Bucky starts unloading bags as they set them down, and Clint heads back outside to grab another load.

He shouldn’t be surprised when Steve has the rest of the bags dangling from his arms and hands; he never was patient enough for multiple trips, and he and Clint used to get into competitions about who could carry the most—always Steve—that ended up in broken jars and eggs more often than either of them would want to admit.

Clint blinks away the memory. “Hand me some of those,” he says after a second. “James’ll be pissed if anything gets messed up.”

Steve hesitates, clearly thrown off, but nods. He passes four bags over to Clint and then moves past him, carrying the rest inside.

Clint stands there, arms staining against the weight—he really hasn’t kept in shape—and just… breathes.

He counts to ten, and then he follows Steve inside, kicking the door shut behind him.

Steve set the bags down on the floor as instructed, and now he’s hovering awkwardly in the kitchen. The reality of how  _ massively stupid  _ it was to just show up seems to be setting in; Clint wants to wonder what Steve expected, but he knows all too well from personal experience how impulsive decisions are just  _ like that  _ sometimes.

Doesn’t mean he’s not pissed, but… he gets it.

Barnes is ignoring Steve for now, methodically putting things away. Clint settles at the table, and Barnes grabs a mug and pours a cup of coffee as he passes the machine, bringing it to Clint before going back to what he was doing. “Thanks,” Clint tells him, and rolls his eyes at Steve when he catches the other man watching them with narrowed eyes. “Come sit down.”

Steve seems to understand that it is not a suggestion. He tenses for a moment, like he’s gearing up to fight Clint on it, but then he deflates and drops into a chair across from Clint.

It puts his back to Barnes, a fact Steve is very aware of, if the pinched look in his eyes is anything to go by.

“How are things in DC?” Clint asks Steve.

Steve sighs. “As good as they can be.” He talks for a while about oversight and government accountability—Nat and Tony have been excellent at making the SHIELD fiasco fall back on the government, rather than let the government scapegoat innocent agents. Clint suspects Steve’s had a strong hand in that as well, as much as Steve is currently downplaying his own involvement.

“How long can they spare you?”

Steve sighs, shrugs. “Let’s just say I’m on call.”

Clint nods. “Okay.”

They fall into silence for a bit, the only sound that of James moving around behind them, still putting things away. “How have things been here?”

Clint raises his eyebrows. “You’ve had updates from Nat and Tony, no doubt.”

Steve doesn’t try to pretend he hasn’t. “I have,” he says, “but maybe I want to hear it from you.”

“It’s been good,” Clint tells him. “Quiet.” He doesn’t really know what else to say.

They’re both somewhat startled when Barnes takes one of the remaining chairs at the table, the wooden legs scraping against the floor as he pulls it back to drop down into the seat. He has his own mug of coffee.

“How are you, Buck?” Steve asks. Clint bites back a wince at the name.

James seems fine, though, or at least projects an unbothered front. “Good,” he says.

There’s a lot of “good” going around, Clint notes, and wishes things weren’t so awkward and stilted between the three of them.

“We watched all of Dog Cops,” Clint says, at a loss for what else to say.

“Oh?” Steve glances between them. “What did you think?” he asks Barnes.

Barnes shrugs. “I don’t know why Clint’s obsessed with it,” he says after a moment, “but it was… fine.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “You so liked it.”

Barnes raises an eyebrow at him. “Keep telling yourself that.”

Steve watches their exchange like someone watching a tennis match. That, Clint thinks, is going to get old  _ real  _ fast.

“I like cartoons,” Steve says after a moment. “Have you watched any yet?”

Barnes shakes his head in the negative. “We’ve been watching Bake Off,” Clint offers. “But cartoons are good too. Were you thinking of one in particular?”

“Avatar the Last Airbender?” Steve suggests, with a glance at Barnes. “Have you heard of it?”

Barnes shakes his head again. He glances at Clint, who gives him a  _ please do not make me carry this whole conversation with whatever Steve is to us  _ and Barnes turns back to Steve and offers him a weak attempt at a smile. “What’s it about?”

Steve takes the offering gratefully, and he’s off, explaining the plot of the show. Barnes actually looks interested after the first few sentences—and, yes, Clint acknowledges once more, the plot of a kid on ice for a hundred years with a grand destiny of saving the world  _ would  _ work for Steve, but he thinks Barnes might like the plot of redemption for Zuko, too.

It also provides an out for the awkwardness of the conversation. “Let’s watch some,” Clint suggests.

Clint gets more coffee—when Barnes started drinking it regularly, they expanded to a larger pot—and pours some for Steve as well, putting in the amount of milk and sugar he knows Steve likes. When he makes it to the living room area, Barnes is in his usual spot, and Steve is in an armchair off to the side.

Clint knows that, eventually, Barnes will remember Steve, and it’ll go back to being their star-crossed love story. He’s making his peace with that. But for now, he’s glad he gets to have his spot on the couch where he can sit sideways and tuck his toes under Barnes’ thigh. If that makes him a bad person, for being glad Steve’s the odd one out, well. He never claimed to be a great person anyway.

Clint barely watches the show. He wants to watch Barnes watch the show, but he knows Barnes will be distracted by the weight of his gaze. Instead, he watches Steve watch Barnes watch the show, and that’s almost as bad.

Eventually, though, Steve gets enraptured once again, and it’s just Clint watching the two men.

He feels a knot of unpleasant emotions with both of them in his sights, but he also feels a startling peace. It’s the same kind of peace he used to feel with Steve, before. It’s almost enough to make him hope that this might all turn out okay.

Almost.

**

They have pasta for dinner, because that’s a thing Clint has in large enough quantity to feed not one but  _ two  _ supersoldier metabolisms. James sets the table, sharing Clint’s space easily, but Clint is tense, feeling Steve’s eyes on them.

James, who usually sits across from Clint, has instead taken the seat next to him, leaving Steve across from them. Clint doesn’t bring it up.

“Do you cook a lot?” Steve asks after a few minutes of nothing but the sound of forks against plates and mouths chewing.

Clint shrugs. “Can’t exactly get delivery out here,” he points out.

Steve nods. The table falls silent again.

When they’re done with dinner, Clint cleans the dishes and sighs. “I’m going to bed,” he says. He’s done with today, and dreading tomorrow, but the bliss of sleep—hopefully dreamless—in between is too tempting to pass up.

“Do you have a spare room?” Steve asks.

Clint hesitates a moment, to see if James will say something. James sleeps with Clint more often than not, now, but the second room  _ is  _ his. James says nothing, so Clint shakes his head. “Sorry.”

“I can just take the couch,” Steve says.

Does he know they sleep together? Clint has to wonder.

(Or does he just not want to sleep with Clint?)

“Okay, well, I’ll grab you blankets. There’s a shower upstairs if you need, and towels are in the cupboard in the bathroom.”

He collects the blankets and digs up a spare pillow, leaves them on the couch, and then doesn’t bother looking back as he heads up the stairs.

He gets undressed for bed, pulling on a t-shirt to go with his sleep pants because the house gets cold now that the season is turning, and when he turns, James is standing in the open doorway, watching him.

Clint tilts his head in question.

James gestures toward Clint and the bed, his own question evident.

Clint mouths the words  _ up to you. _

James chews on his bottom lip for a few moments before he nods, once, and climbs into Clint’s bed.

A vice that had gripped around Clint’s heart eases slightly.

He takes out his hearing aids and slips into bed next to James.

He wonders if Steve can hear that they’re sleeping together. (Probably.) He wonders if he cares. (He does.)

But James tugs Clint closer to his body, and Clint can’t help relaxing into his warmth.

He doesn’t want to whisper anything, so he just tucks his head under James’ chin and goes to sleep.

**

Clint wakes up the next morning to the smell of bacon.

That wouldn’t be weird, except James is still tucked up against him, breath hot against his hair.

Steve, then.

Clint disentangles himself from James’ tendency to octopus cuddle—initially a surprise, now just annoying in the mornings when Clint  _ really  _ needs to pee—and pads down the stairs, avoiding the creaky step not out of any attempt to be stealthy, but simply habit.

“Morning,” he greets, voice still sleep rough.

Steve turns and gives him a smile. “Coffee?”

Clint grunts and nods. He goes for the coffeepot, but Steve just gestures at the table, so Clint changes track and collapses into his usual seat instead. Steve brings him a mug of coffee, and it would be horribly domestic if not for the fact that he doesn’t know that he’s giving Clint one of James’ mugs.

That small detail helps Clint hold on to the fact that this isn’t anything worth fantasizing about. Instead, he drinks his coffee. That’ll clear his head. (He hopes.)

James hasn’t come down by the time Steve finishes breakfast. “Should we wait?” Steve asks.

Clint shrugs. “Stick a plate in the oven. He’ll be down when he’s ready.”

Steve makes up three plates, sticks one in the oven, and brings the other two over to the table. He sits across from Clint, in the same seat as last night. “How is he?”

Clint shrugs. “Better.”

Steve quirks an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

Clint shrugs again. “Ask him directly.”

Steve looks like he’s going to argue for a moment, but then he visibly swallows the urge. “Fair enough.”

They eat in silence for a few more minutes before Steve asks, quietly, “How are you?”

Clint’s fork slips from between his fingers, clattering against the plate.

How  _ is  _ he? Fuck if he knows.

“Fine,” he says after a minute. “You?”

Steve looks lost. Sad. Clint wants to fix it and knows he can’t. “I’ve been better,” Steve admits quietly. He quirks a half-smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Been worse, too.”

“Sounds about right,” Clint agrees.

They go back to eating their eggs and bacon.

Clint’s almost grateful when his phone rings. He sees the caller ID—Natasha—and takes it outside to answer. “Tell me you didn’t know about this,” he says, instead of hello.

“I need your help,” she says, instead of answering.

Clint glances back at the house. “With what?”

She huffs, and he knows she’s annoyed that he didn’t agree immediately—but what did she expect? He’s kind of got his hands full at the moment. “A HYDRA base. They’ll have intel on what was done to Barnes. Tony’s being watched too closely to accompany me, especially now that Steve’s gone off the grid for a bit. I need you.”

Clint curses quietly. “How important is this?”

“Would I be asking if it wasn’t important enough?”

He curses again. “I can’t just leave him here, Natasha.”

“He’s with Steve. He’ll be fine.”

And Clint  _ knows  _ that.

That is, possibly, what he is selfishly worried about. That he’ll leave, and they’ll bond, and he’ll be irrelevant even quicker than before. That his last few moments of intimacy with James will be stolen away by this mission.

But he takes a deep breath, and he grounds himself.

He can’t be selfish here. Not because it’s wrong—he’s not that strong—but because this information he and Nat are going to collect might help James.

Clint’s gone and fallen in love with James, he realizes.

He can’t bring himself to regret it.

“Okay,” he agrees. “I’ll take the car Steve drove in with and I’ll meet you in…” he considers. “Kansas City.”

“I’ll be there by 5 pm.”

Clint sighs. It’s already 8 am now, and it’ll take him four or five hours to get there—more, if he sticks to less common roadways where possible to avoid being noticed in a car Steve got from who knows where—so he should leave ASAP. “Send me coordinates.”

She doesn’t reply, just hangs up. Clint flips his phone shut with a sigh and mutters, “Nice to talk to you too.”

He leans against the porch railing, unwilling to go back inside. It isn’t until he feels eyes on him that he turns, expecting Steve. He should have known it would be James, though; Steve could never move that quietly unless he was in mission-mode. Maybe even then.

“Hey,” Clint says quietly. “How much did you hear?”

“You’re leaving,” James says.

Clint nods. “It’s important. I wouldn’t leave otherwise.”

James studies him for a moment before he dips his head in an almost-nod. “Steve will stay?”

“I won’t go unless he promises,” Clint vows. “But he wouldn’t leave you alone anyway.” Of this, Clint is certain—there is nothing in the world so important to Steve Rogers as James Buchanan Barnes.

“I—” James cuts himself off. Frowns. Then he meets Clint’s eyes, defiance in his own, and says, “I’ll miss you.”

It hits Clint like a ton of bricks. He doesn’t want to  _ lose  _ this. “I’ll miss you too.” He means it for more than this mission—he means it for the future, when James realizes he’ll always choose Steve, too.

“Can I--?” James cuts off again.

Clint waits. He knows how hard it can be to ask for things when you don’t know for sure you deserve them.

“Can I kiss you?”

And, oh.  _ Oh.  _ Clint’s so glad he waited for that. For once, he doesn’t think about Steve, inside, no doubt eavesdropping on this conversation. He just thinks about himself, and what he wants, and he says, “Yes.”

James’ eyes widen. But the resolve steals across his expression moments later, and when he crosses the space between them, his movements are sure. His hands come up to cradle Clint’s face, one cold in the morning chill and one warm, and Clint’s eyes drift shut unbidden.

The press of lips to his is, fuck, everything, and also over far too soon. They don’t actually break apart until they need to breathe in spite of the chasteness of the kiss, just a brush of lips on lips, but it feels like every moment that Clint is not kissing James is a moment wasted, stolen, lost. “Come back safe,” James whispers against Clint’s lips. “I’ll be waiting.”

**

They go to Europe. They kill some people and blow up a HYDRA base. Nat gets the intel to take to Tony and Clint tries not to think about the minutes when she said, “Shit. Give me five,” and turned off her comms. Not because he was particularly worried about Nat—although also that—but because he didn’t want to know what she might have found about what they’d done to James.

Before and after the mission, Natasha tries to ask him questions—about James, about Steve, about himself. But he’s learned from her even as she learned from him, and he deflects or refuses to answer. The questions eventually subside.

James doesn’t have a phone for Clint to text. He texts Steve three times. The phones are untraceable and encrypted, but that doesn’t stop Clint from being vague.  _ The Thunder has stupid team colors _ , he texts when he hits Kansas City.

He texts a picture of his hand in the thumbs up position after the op. He chooses his less bloody hand and wipes it clean before he takes the picture.

Lastly, he texts  _ home soon  _ when Natasha drops him in Chicago a day later. His body aches and his ribs are taped and he wants Steve and James and also he’s afraid that things will have irrevocably shifted in three days he’s been gone.

He drives and can’t stop himself from putting on his and Steve’s Pandora. He doesn’t cry along to Elton John when one of Steve’s favorite songs comes on. It’s fine.

When he pulls into the driveway of the farm, it’s late. The sky is cloudless and Clint can see a million stars. The moon is full and bright, illuminating the driveway, and the porch light is on.

James appears in the doorway as Clint shuts off the engine.

Clint takes a deep breath and steels himself. Then he climbs out of the car and shoves the keys deep in his pockets. “Hey,” he says.

Like that was all he was waiting for, James rushes toward Clint, leaving the door wide open behind him. He doesn’t stop a few inches away like Clint expects, doesn’t even hesitate; instead, he throws himself at Clint, wrapping his arms around him.

Clint’s ribs twinge, but that’s a small price to pay. He holds James in return, arms low to his sides but circling around his back.

“Tell me you’re okay,” James demands.

“I’m fine,” Clint promises. “Bruised ribs is the worst of it. A few scrapes and bruises otherwise. I’m fine.”

James nods, nose brushing against the skin of Clint’s neck where he’s tucked his own head over Clint’s shoulder. “Good.”

“Missed you,” Clint admits.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Every minute.”

“Fuck. Missed you too.”

Clint doesn’t know how long they stand like that, but eventually his desire to get in out of the cold outweighs his desire to stay in James’ arms forever. James releases him as he moves away, and Clint pulls his duffel out of the car.

James takes it from him, and Clint rolls his eyes but allows it.

When they get inside, Steve’s in the kitchen at the stove, making what looks like yet more pasta. “Hey,” Clint greets.

Steve turns and gives him a smile. “Hey back.”

Clint rolls his eyes and drops into his chair at the table. It’s the perfect vantage point from which to watch Steve and allow himself to drift, warm in the comfort of being home—so he does.

Dinner is fine. They don’t talk about much. Clint honestly can’t remember how anything tasted—which, considering Steve cooked, might be for the best.

James clears their plates when they finish and then says, “I’m going to go shower.” He gives Steve a meaningful look, and Steve chokes a little on his own tongue, apparently, and Clint is instantly alert.

“What’s up?” he asks.

James brushes a kiss against his cheek, and that calms Clint somewhat. “I’ll be down in twenty minutes,” he says, and he’s still looking at Clint, but Clint senses that the words are for Steve.

James goes, and Steve continues to sit there looking vaguely like he’s swallowed a lemon, or is at least sucking on some very sour candy. “What’s up?” Clint asks again, when it becomes clear Steve is incapable of starting whatever conversation James wants them to have.

“I’m an idiot,” Steve says. “And an asshole.”

Clint blinks. “Oh-kay?”

Steve scrubs a hand over his face. “I… love you,” he says.

“Sure,” Clint agrees. “’Cause we’re soulmates.”

“No,” Steve says firmly. “Not because we’re soulmates. I love you because you gave me a reason to want to live again, and you gave me a home, and  _ you’re  _ my home. I love every part of you.”

Clint feels somewhat detached from reality. In that, this can’t be real. “But—”

“I’m an idiot,” Steve says. “I made you feel like I didn’t want you anymore, and that’s my fault. I just… fuck, I lost track of everything when we found out Bucky was alive. It’s not an excuse, but it’s the only explanation I have.”

“Okay,” Clint says again, because what else is there to say? Okay, okay, okay…

“It’s not okay,” Steve says quietly. “I know that. But I’d like to try to fix it, if you’ll let me.”

“How?” Clint’s question comes out whispered because he’s afraid to put it out into the world. He’s afraid to hope, and he’s afraid to know if what Steve can give him will ever be enough.

“By being here, for one,” Steve says. “By making it work.”

“You’re Captain America,” Clint points out. “You can just… stop.”

Steve shrugs. “I love being Cap,” he admits. “But I love you more.”

Clint doesn’t  _ mean  _ to start crying.

Steve doesn’t move toward him, although it’s clear he wants to. He looks anguished, but he just waits Clint out. “Okay,” Clint says. “We can… fuck, we can try this again.” Then he says, “What about James?”

Steve bites his lip. “We’ll have to ask him?” Steve shrugs. “He seems pretty set on being wherever you are.”

Clint glances up at the stairs. “Any progress?”

Steve nods. “He remembers more than he thinks. Mostly if I bring stuff up, it’ll spark a memory. He said…” Steve trails off.

“What?” Clint prompts.

“He said he loves me even though he’s pissed at me,” Steve admits. Clint cracks a small grin. “Which is about par for the course, all things considered.”

“Good,” Clint says with a small sigh of relief. “I wasn’t trying to keep him from you. I swear.”

“I know,” Steve tells him. “I’m sorry I stopped calling.”

“I’m sorry I never answered.”

Clint reaches out across the table, and Steve meets him halfway, hand closing over Clint’s. Clint feels settled, steady. Like maybe everything really will be okay, if they keep at this. Like they can figure it out.

They’re still holding hands when James comes down the stairs, and his expression is approving. “Done being idiots?”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees.

“Good.” He tilts his head at them both, considering. “Huh. We need a bigger bed.”

That makes Clint laugh. He laughs until he can’t breathe, and then he keeps laughing. “Yeah,” he finally chokes out.

“We can push some mattresses together,” Steve suggests. “For now.”

“I can build a new frame to hold two,” Clint puts in.

James perks up. “Can I help?”

“Yeah,” Clint promises, feeling warm when he looks at the two of them—his partners, his soulmates, his loves. “Okay, well, I’ve got bruised ribs, I’m sure not moving heavy furniture around.”

Steve hops to his feet. “On it.” He dashes off, and Clint’s a little dazed in his wake. He raises an eyebrow at James.

“Let him be helpful,” James suggests. “Actions speak louder than words in Steve’s world.”

Clint hums in quiet agreement. “Fine by me.”

James makes them coffee but insists on making it decaf—“death before decaf” is not a motto James apparently subscribes to—and nudges Clint over to the couch. He sits down and reels Clint in until they’re both sitting sideways, Clint tucked between James’ legs and against his chest.

They watch an episode of Dog Cops while ignoring the sounds of Steve banging furniture into walls.

It’s easy. Safe.

Clint’s happy.

“I love you,” he says into the quiet of the moment.

James kisses Clint’s shoulder. “Love you.”

**

They tumble onto two queen mattresses pushed together on the floor taking up an entire bedroom, and there’s still not enough space.

Clint laughs again until James is gumbling at him to “shut up and go to sleep” and Steve smacks him with a pillow.

He settles, tucked against James’ side with Steve spooned up behind him, both of them careful about Clint’s ribs. He feels protected and cherished.

It’s too much, and only  _ just  _ enough.

It’s a start. 


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the smutty epilogue. You have been warned. ;) Enjoy!

_ One Year Later _

Clint looks up when James and Steve tumble through the door, arguing about something stupid.

Clint doesn’t know what it is, but it’s guaranteed to be stupid. They just like to argue.

“’Bout time,” he calls out, and the arguing cuts off.

James is the first to Clint’s side, and he flops down on top of where Clint is sprawled out across their ridiculously huge couch. “Hi,” James says, grinning down at him.

Clint feels his breath catch, and it’s only partially because of James’ weight on his chest. “Hi,” he says back. “Kiss me?”

James is moving to do just that before Clint’s even finished the question, lips pressing against Clint’s on the last word. Clint sighs into the kiss, reaching up to run his hand across James’ side.

“You’re keeping Clint all to yourself,” Clint hears Steve complain, a little distantly. He’s distracted by James teeth nipping at his bottom lip and the way it makes his whole body feel electrified.

“Plenty of me to go around,” Clint says eventually, breathless, when James' mouth moves from his lips down his neck.

“Is that so?” Steve asks, voice hot. “Buck. What do you want to do?”

Clint bites his lip, waiting to hear what James’ answer will be. Clint and Steve are used to sex, but they’re wary of James’ limits, never wanting to push for more intimacy than he’s comfortable with, never wanting to assume that just because something was okay before, it will be fine now. 

Sometimes James will start something and leave Steve or Clint to finish it—not that either of them really minds. It’s one of the benefits of having two partners, after all.

This does not appear to be one of those times. “Wanna suck Clint off,” James says, lips still brushing across Clint’s skin. “Don’t really care what you do.”

Steve laughs softly. “Oh, is that how it is?”

“Yep,” James agrees, unrepentant. He glances up at Clint. “That okay with you?”

“Shit, yeah,” Clint agrees. “Can Steve fuck my mouth while you do?”

“I guess,” James agrees with a little smirk, glancing up at Steve. “If you really want.”

Steve rolls his eyes.

Clint is already horny and a little desperate from going _ days _ without them while they were away on mission—which he _ knew _ would happen when they made the decision to move to Stark Tower and re/join the Avengers and Clint chose to teach archery at a local range instead. But, it still sucks, and he wants all of them, _ now. _So he does not have the patience for James’ teasing. “Please,” he begs. “Need you both.”

James breaks away from his staring contest with Steve to give Clint a soft, warm smile. “You got it,” he says easily, ducking down to kiss Clint once more. “We’re yours. Always.”

Clint can’t help but whine softly when James says that, rocking his hips up against James’ thigh where it’s resting between Clint’s legs. “Needy,” James comments.

“You were gone for _ days,” _Clint points out, breathless.

“Don’t worry, we’ll make it up to you,” Steve promises, and Clint whines and arches again. He knows from experience that Steve never promises that lightly—he means to deliver, and delivering includes _ more _than just one round of mind-blowing sex.

“Fuck, okay, just touch me, someone, please,” Clint begs shamelessly.

James pulls away from him instead, climbing off of Clint and offering a hand to help him up. “Bed first.”

Clint pouts but accepts the hand up.

Steve tugs Clint into his arms as soon as he’s standing, arms curved around Clint’s back. “Missed you,” Steve says. He kisses Clint with _ intent, _and Clint has to lean against Steve as his knees go a little bit weak with it.

“You too,” Clint agrees when Steve pulls back enough that they can both breathe for a minute. “Fuck me?”

“In a bit,” Steve promises, and leans in to kiss Clint again.

James apparently won’t stand to be left out for long, because he quickly steps up to bracket Clint between them, warm against Clint’s back. His hands slip under Clint’s shirt to stroke over his abs; Clint sucks in a breath at the feeling of James’ hands on his skin and feels the ridges of his muscles grow more defined in turn.

“Now?” Clint asks hopefully.

Steve kisses him once more, brief but warm and wet and full of promise. “Okay,” he agrees.

James tugs Clint out of Steve’s arms and steers him toward their bedroom. Not for the first time, Clint laments that Tony designed the floor so that the master bedroom was at the end of a long hall of rooms—he has to have done that on purpose. Asshole.

Still, it isn’t long before Clint’s tumbling onto the bed. He tugs his shirt off and tosses it vaguely somewhere before shoving his pants down and kicking them away from his legs. He’d be embarrassed about being so desperate, maybe, if Steve and James weren’t divesting themselves of their clothes in a similar haste.

James is the first out of his clothes—probably because Steve insists on wearing button-up shirts to debriefs after missions, a level of formality James can’t be bothered with—and he settles himself between Clint’s legs, looking up at him through his lashes.

Clint’s hit in that moment, as he often is, with a total disbelief at how he _ gets this. _“Fuck, James,” he whines, and his hips rock up into the air.

James’ hands settle on his hips to pin them down, and Clint whines again. He can’t resist pushing against James’ hold just to feel how firm it is.

He’s about to beg again and keep begging until he gets _ something, anything, _when James leans forward and sucks the head of Clint’s cock into his mouth.

Clint cries out and clenches his fists in the sheets, needing to hold on to something. James doesn’t let up, sucking and licking for a few long moments before slowly sinking down, taking Clint into his mouth inch by gradual inch.

Clint’s so worked up that he can feel tears in the corners of his eyes—and then Steve is there, climbing on top of him, settling with his knees on either side of Clint’s head. “Still want my cock?” he asks. Clint nods frantically. “I need words,” Steve tells him, not giving Clint the easy out. His cock is _ so close _but too far; Clint wants to try to stretch to reach it anyway.

“Please, I want it, I need it, please,” Clint begs.

Steve reaches down to stroke Clint’s cheek, thumb catching on his lips and pushing inside. Clint sucks on it eagerly; it’s not what he wants, but it’s something.

“God, you’re beautiful,” Steve tells him and Clint whines. He tries to thrust into the heat of James’ mouth, but he’s still pinned down by strong hands and can do nothing but take what they’ll give him at whatever pace they choose.

Clint doesn’t realize his eyes have slipped shut until he feels the head of Steve’s dick against his lips. He opens for it greedily, not caring how needy he is, and sucks around as much of it as Steve will give to him. It’s grounding against the haze of pleasure overwhelming him, and the way Steve groans above him is gratifying as well.

He loses the tread of thing somewhat from there. Steve fucks his mouth with a pace that’s slow but relentless, match perfectly with James’ own pace. When Clint comes, he feels like every drop of pleasure has been wrung out of his body; he’s boneless and relaxed, and Steve waits for him to finish but then taps his jaw and asks, “Can I keep going?”

Clint taps twice at Steve’s thigh, a pre-established “yes,” and Steve fucks Clint’s mouth until he comes down Clint’s throat, and it’s heaven.

When Steve pulls away, Clint only resists trying to grab him back because his body is lax and he doesn’t feel like expending any energy in movement, even to pull Steve close.

Steve doesn’t go far, though. He settles on one side of Clint and tugs James forward until he’s curled against Clint’s other side.

Clint’s cocooned in the warmth of his lovers’ bodies and he feels so safe, so warm, so happy. “Love you,” he tells them again.

“Love you,” James says instantly, easily, kissing Clint’s forehead even as he strokes soothing patterns against Clint’s chest.

“Love you both,” Steve agrees.

Clint dozes until he feels grounded in his body again, and then he dozes a little more just for the hell of it. But then he glances between the two of them and says, “Okay, so who’s up for round two?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap! I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Endless thanks again to Bobbi for the best prompt ever. 
> 
> If anyone has ideas of more they want to see in this verse (especially fluffier content ideas) pls let me know! I may be done with this fic, but I don't know that I'm done with the whole concept yet. <3
> 
> Lastly, thanks to everyone who's been reading and commenting; you've made me feel really good about this whole experience. Love to you all.


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